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A GOLDEN AGE OF AUTHOKS 




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A GOLDEN 
AGE OF AUTHORS 

A Publisher's Recollection 

BY 

WILLIAM WEBSTER ELLSWORTH 

With BliLStrations 




BOSTON AND NEW YORK 
HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY 

THE RIVERSIDE PRESS CAMBRIDGE 

1919 






COPYRXOHT, 1919, BY WILLIAM W. ELLSWORTH 
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED 



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25 TO 

^ FRED LEWIS PATTEE 

(f(^ PROFESSOR OF ENGLISH LITERATURE 

AT STATE COLLEGE, PENNSYLVANIA 

AND AUTHOR OF 

"a HISTORY OF AMERICAN LITERATURE SINCE 1870 

WHO FIRST GAVE ME THE IDEA OF 

WRITING THIS BOOK 



PREFACE 

This hook is founded upon two lectures which I have been 
delivering since my retirement from The Century Company 
in December, 1915, Doubtless there are lines in it which 
should bear quotation marks, lines which may have been 
cribbed from books or articles. Unfortunately, as one can- 
not refer to footnotes in a lecture, no record was made of my 
reading, and the book will have to go forth as it stands, bear- 
ing apologies to the real authors whose work unwittingly I 
may have used. 

The lectures are only the basis of the book and what is 
left of them is much changed. Of course if I were still a pub- 
lisher, I could not have written so freely, but, being now out 
of the delightful hurly-burly, I can sit down calmly and 
recall some of the interesting events of which I have been a 
humble part. That the book contains much about one pub- 
lishing house is excusable, perhaps, if the reader will realize 
that for nearly forty years I was a member of that house and 
have never been connected with any other, 

WILLIAM W. ELLSWORTH 

Esperanza Farm 

New Hartford, Conn, 

July, 1919 



CONTENTS 
Chapter I 1 

Publisher and author — An early Roswell Smith — Roswell 
Smith, founder of Scribner's Monthly — Dr. Holland — Early 
office work. 

Chapter II 15 

New York in the seventies — Mary L. Booth's receptions — Ed- 
win Booth — Richard Harding Davis — Ion Perdicaris — Back 
to Edgar Allan Poe — General Sherman — The Scribner firm — 
First women clerks — R. L. Stevenson — Frank R. Stockton — 
"William Carey — Helen Hunt Jackson. 

Chapter III 88 

American literature in 1870 — Harper's Magazine — The first 
number of the new Scribner's Monthly — Its contemporaries — 
Charles Dudley Warner — The Great South papers — George 
W. Cable — William Dean Howells. 

Chapter IV 54 

Bret Harte — John Hay — Noah Brooks — Thomas Nelson 
Page — Irwin Russell — Edward Eggleston — Walt Whitman. 

Chapter V 66 

The Gudgeon Club — Frank H. Scott — Charles F, Chichester — 
Alexander W. Drake — Timothy Cole — George Inness and In- 
ness, Jr., — Joseph Jefferson — F. Hopkinson Smith. 

Chapter VI 88 

St. Nicholas — Mary Mapes Dodge — Rudyard Kipling — 
Kate Douglas Wiggin — Jack London. 

Chapter VII 103 

English publishers — The great Boston group of authors — 
Richard Henry Dana and "Two Years Before the Mast" — Lit- 

[ix] 



CONTENTS 

erary agents — James T. Fields — John B. Gough — Dryden 
and his publisher — The Civil War and literature — The Cen- 
tennial — Sidney Lanier — John Burroughs — John Muir — 
Thoreau — Ernest Thompson Seton — Margaret Deland — 
Henry James — Robert Browning — Edmund Gosse — Charles 
Waldstein — H. G. Wells — George Moore — Chesterton. 

Chapter VIII 121 

Scribner's Monthly the first to take advertising — The growth 
of advertising — S. S. McClure — Edward Bok — Magazine 
editors — George William Curtis — The twenty-fifth anniver- 
sary of the dedication at Gettysburg — Lincoln at Gettysburg 
and at the Cooper Institute — A Lincoln lecture — The Barnard 
statue of Lincoln. 

Chapter IX 140 

Richard Watson Gilder. 

Chapter X 155 

Augustus Saint-Gaudens. 

Chapter XI 165 

Can novels be cheaper? — The cost of a book — Advertising books 

— Harold Bell Wright and some "best sellers" — How he does it 

— Publishers' troubles. 

Chapter XII 180 

"Discovering" authors — Alice Hegan Rice — "Frances Little" 

— Editors' and publishers' mistakes — Mr. Alden and Amelie 
Rives — George Ripley and "Ben Hur" — "David Harum" — 
Mary E. Wilkins — Dr. Mitchell and "Hugh Wynne" — Win- 
ston Churchill — Paul Leicester Ford — Charles D. Stewart. 

Chapter XIII 199 

The De Vinne Press — The Century Dictionary. 

Chapter XIV 211 

Old-time humor — Petroleum V. Nasby — Gail Hamilton — 
Josh Billings — "The Life of P. T. Barnum, by Himself" — 
Humorous newspapers — John Kendrick Bangs — Bill Nye — 
Irvin Cobb. 



CONTENTS 
Chapter XV 221 

Mark Twain — The Grant "Memoirs" — Nicolay and Hay's 
"Lincoln." 

Chapter XVI 243 

Dinners at the Aldine Club — Conan Doyle — Henry M. Stan- 
ley — Marion Crawford — Oliver Herford — Theodore Roose- 
velt — The English Winston Churchill — Major Pond — Lec- 
tures. 

Chapter XVII 258 

George Kennan — Alexander Graham Bell. 

Chapter XVIII 283 

The Suppressed Interview with the German Emperor. 

Index 295 



ILLUSTRATIONS 

Richard Watson Gilder Frontispiece 

Mrs. Roswell Smith 8 

Who, as a Young Girl, Annie Ellsworth, sent the First Telegraphic 



Roswell Smith 12 

Dr. J. G. Holland 24 

Frank R. Stockton 30 

William Carey at Twenty-five and at Forty 34 

A Sonnet, by Dr. J. G. Holland 44 

Alexander W. Drake 68 

At a Twelfth-Night Revel of the Century Club 

Timothy Cole, engraved on a Wood Block by 

himself 72 

Joseph Jefferson and his Youngest Boy 80 

A Monotype by Joseph Jefferson 84 

Last Paragraph of a Letter from Joseph Jef- 
ferson 86 

A Page of the Autographs of George William 
Curtis and his Party on the Trip to Gettys- 
burg, July 3 and 4, 1888 132 

Pen-and-Ink Sketch of Lincoln by John Wol- 136 
cott Adams 

[ xiii ] 



ILLUSTRATIONS 

Front Cover of the Menu of Richard Watson 
Gilder's Fortieth- Year Birthday Dinner 148 

Back Cover of the Menu of Richard Watson 
Gilder's Fortieth- Year Birthday Dinner 152 

Cover Designs of Scribner's Monthly and The 
Century 158 

A Portrait Sketch of Augustus Saint-Gaudens 
made in a Visitors' Book 162 

Jean Webster 182 

Dr. S. Weir Mitchell at Mount Desert 190 

The Bronze Bust of Theodore L. De Vinne 200 
BY Chester Beach 

A Letter from Mark Twain 222 

Tribute of Oliver Herford for the Menu- 
BooK OF a Dinner in Honor of Alexander 
W. Drake 250 

The Home of George Kennan at Baddeck, 
Cape Breton Island, Nova Scotia 264 



A GOLDEN AGE OF AUTHORS 



A GOLDEN AGE OF AUTHORS 

CHAPTER I 

Publisher and author — An early RosweU Smith — Roswell Smith, 
founder of Scribner's Monthly — Dr. Holland — Early office work 

I WOULD rather be a writer of books — good books 
that add something to the world's knowledge or 
pleasure — than to be anything else that I can 
think of, even a president of the United States. 
President Franklin Pierce and Novelist Nathaniel 
Hawthorne were contemporaries and friends; the 
President did much for the novelist — but whose 
name has gone the farthest? If I cannot be a writer, 
I am content to have been a publisher, and so to 
have had a share in producing many more books 
than any one author could write. The publisher gets 
his reward in numbers, for he can bring out fifty or 
a hundred or more books a year — some publishers 
average a book a day — and his list becomes to him 
almost as his own family; and there have been pub- 
lishers who were writers as well, but I had most of 
the writing taken out of me when I was a young man 
by an older publisher and my superior officer, who, 
when he found that I was inclined to write poetry, 
as I had tried to do in still callower days, told me 

[1 ] 



A GOLDEN AGE OF AUTHORS 

that he thought, perhaps, I could be a poet or a 
pubhsher but not both. "And, WiUiam," he said, 
*'I have found that I can get a better poem written 
for five dollars than I can write myself, and I advise 
you to do the same." So for many years I have been 
paying other people for poetry, but every one knows 
that not much poetry can be bought to-day for five 
dollars; even "free verse" is n't free to pubHshers. 

The man who frightened away my very feeble 
muse and who gave me in rich return the oppor- 
tunity to work with him in my formative years, and 
so to learn what little I ever knew of business, was 
Roswell Smith, founder, with Dr. Holland and 
Charles Scribner, of Scribner's Monthly, now The 
Century. He was my mother's cousin, brought up 
with her by her father, Roswell Chamberlain 
Smith, an author of school-books, very successful 
in their day, — Smith's Grammar, Smith's Arith- 
metic, Smith's Geography, and similar works. 

I well remember, as a little boy, going with my 
grandfather, Roswell Chamberlain Smith, to call 
upon Mrs. Harriet Beecher Stowe, when my grand- 
father presented that lady with a copy of one of his 
newly issued geographies. The following letter from 
Mrs. Stowe's contemporary and neighbor, Mrs. 
Sigourney, has been for many years one of the treas- 
ures of my autograph collection: 

[2] 



MRS. SIGOURNEY 

Hartfordy Saturday, Nov, 21, 1857 
My dear Sir: Our conversation last evening respecting 
the venerated Pastor of your earliest years reminded me 
of a slight sketch of him in a work of which I ask your 
acceptance. 

My love to Mrs. Smith, and say to her how much I 
enjoyed and was cheered by being comprehended in her 
delightful social circle last evening at your elegant 
mansion. 

Yours with respect 

L. H. SiGOURNEY 

I prize this not only because it is typical of our 
Hartford poetess, with its delightful allusion to be- 
ing "comprehended," but because it is always 
pleasant to know that one's grandfather lived in 
an "elegant mansion." My grandfather had earned 
his mansion from the sale of his school-books. He 
started in life so poor that he could not afford to 
complete his college course, and in his last days he 
never tired of describing his early struggles and 
triumphs. One of his favorite stories was about a 
school examination which he had passed with great 
brilliancy, and the girls in the class, jealous of his 
success, gathered at the door as he went out and 
greeted him with "Soon ripe, soon rotten." 

About the last public appearance of Roswell 
Chamberlain Smith in Hartford was at a reception 
given by Governor Marshall Jewell to General 

[3] 



A GOLDEN AGE OF AUTHORS 

Grant. At the time. Grant was President of the 
United States and Marshall Jewell his Postmaster- 
General. I was a boy, and went with my grand- 
father; and I remember standing by somewhat im- 
patiently until, our turn coming in the line, he shook 
the general's hand long and ardently and poured 
into the general's ear his own name and the titles 
of some of his books. He was an old man and very 
proud of his textbooks. No response, a stolid, far- 
away look on the face of the hero of Shiloh. We 
passed on, and looking back, I saw that a local 
celebrity, Colonel George P. Bissell, was standing 
behind General Grant, and with his arm thrust 
under the general's was shaking hands with the 
guests. Obviously General Grant was tired and 
Colonel Bissell had come to his relief. My boyish 
delight in knowing that my grandfather had been 
all that time pumping the arm of Colonel George 
P. Bissell lasted for years. 

Looking back upon Roswell Chamberlain Smith's 
textbooks, it seems sometimes as if in these days we 
have not made great progress in educational helps. 
The books had been supplanted in schools before 
my time, but I saw them around the house, and re- 
member very well the peculiar property they pos- 
sessed of making one remember what they taught. 
The opening question in Smith's Grammar was 

[4] 



ROSWELL CHAMBERLAIN SMITH 

"What is your name?" Pointed and interesting. 
Answering this, the pupil presently stumbled on 
the fact that his name was a noun, and that Boston 
was also a noun, being a name, and book was a noun 
too, so that "a noun is the name of any person, 
place, or thing." 

For many years before his death my grandfather 
was engaged upon a new geography for little chil- 
dren, which has never seen the light of day. In it he 
let his ideas of "emblems" in maps run riot. He 
had already used these "emblems," — that is, tiny 
cuts of animals, etc., to a limited extent in one of 
his earlier primary geographies, — but in this there 
was a cut or two in nearly every square inch of the 
maps. You saw where whales were caught, where 
icebergs floated in the North Atlantic, where mines, 
forests, or fisheries were located and where ele- 
phants trumpeted through the jungle. I have often 
wondered whether later geographers made use 
of such cuts; certainly they gave to the child an 
instantaneous photograph of what was "doing" 
everywhere on the earth's surface. Perhaps the 
educational "movies" of our day have taken their 
place. 

The idea of "emblems" was not original with 
Roswell Chamberlain Smith. Dean Swift wrote a 
hundred years before: 

[5] 



A GOLDEN AGE OF AUTHORS 

"So geographers, in Afric's maps. 
With savage pictures fill their gaps. 
And o'er uninhabitable downs, 
Place elephants for want of towns." 

The use of old-fashioned textbooks was not with- 
out good results. A fifteen-year-old boy who gradu- 
ated from a New England district-school in the 
years 1840 to 1860, may not have known as much 
about as many things as a boy in a New York public 
school, but what he did know he knew thoroughly. 

My father, too, was a bookman, a publisher, 
chiefly of school-books, with an oflSce on Cornhill 
in Boston. He published, I remember, a series of 
readers and spellers which were translated into the 
liquid, vowelly language of the Sandwich Islands, 
and these as a little boy I loved to read aloud, trans- 
lating the sentences with the aid of the English edi- 
tion, where all the words were in a corresponding 
place on the page. Certainly books, or at any rate 
school-books, must be in my blood, for I read re- 
cently that my grandfather's grammar " was at one 
time in the hands of more school-children than was 
any similar school-book except Webster's Spelling- 
Book," — and my paternal great-grandfather wrote 
the Spelling Book. 

I knew that I wanted to have to do with books 

[6] 



ROSWELL SMITH 

from the time that Scribner's Monthly was begun 
in 1870, when 1 was fifteen years old; and then it 
was that my uncle-cousin, Roswell Smith, who 
loved me because he loved my mother, told me that 
some day there would be a place for me in the office. 
Long before, he had read law in Hartford and had 
made his home with my grandfather; my mother, 
who had been a sister to him for many years, gave 
him a word of advice as he went away, which he 
often told me had helped him more than anything 
else ever said to him. It was simply, ''Be some- 
body, Roswell." 

He went West to Lafayette, Indiana, and into 
the law-office and also into the family of Henry L. 
Ellsworth, a great-uncle of mine, who had been the 
first Commissioner of Patents — "the father of the 
Patent Office" he was called. He had been a friend 
of Samuel F. B. Morse, and interested in Professor 
Morse's experiments with the electric telegraph, 
and his daughter Annie had sent the first tele- 
graphic message, that wonderfully appropriate pas- 
sage from the Psalms, "What hath God wrought," 
which her mother found for her. 

A letter in my file from Benson J. Lossing to Mr. 
Gilder, written in 1872, contains the paragraph: 
"Professor Morse, when telling me, several years 
ago, the story of his struggles at that time, men- 

[7] 



A GOLDEN AGE OF AUTHORS 

tioned his emotions when in the early gray of the 
morning of the 4th of March, 1843, Miss Annie Ells- 
worth announced to him, in the parlor of a Washing- 
ton hotel, the joyful news that Congress had ap- 
propriated $30,000, and the promise then given that 
the fair maiden should send the first message over 
the wires." 

Professor Morse and Mr. Ellsworth had remained 
until very late at the closing session of the House of 
Representatives the night before, hoping for the 
passage of the appropriation. The inventor had 
finally gone away discouraged, but Mr. Ellsworth 
stayed until the bill was passed. Returning home 
he had his daughter Annie awakened that she might 
be the one to carry the news to their anxious friend. 

With daughter Annie, Roswell Smith fell in love. 
There was a runaway match, forgiveness, and a 
settling down, but in time Roswell tired of La- 
fayette. He wanted a larger field; he had made some 
money, chiefly in real estate, and he determined to 
go East and buy a newspaper. Then came a trip to 
Europe with Dr. Holland, who was at the height 
of his popularity as the author of "Timothy Tit- 
comb's Letters," "Bitter-Sweet," and "Kathrina." 
One evening on a Geneva bridge Dr. Holland made 
the proposition that they should start a magazine 
together, and Roswell Smith agreeing, departed 

[8] 




MRS. ROSWELL SMITH 

Who, as a young girl, Annie Ellsworth, sent the first telegraphic message, "What hath God 

wrought " 



ROSWELL SMITH 

for America with a letter of introduction to the senior 
Charles Scribner, who had been Dr. Holland's pub- 
hsher. The joint-stock company of "Scribner & 
Co." was organized, Roswell Smith and Dr. Hol- 
land each taking three-tenths of the stock and the 
Scribner firm the other four-tenths. 

The name Scribner's Monthly was given to the 
new magazine in honor of Mr. Scribner, for whom 
Dr. Holland had great respect, and Mr. Scribner's 
magazine. Hours at Home, ceased publication when 
the new venture was launched. 

With Richard Watson Gilder as Dr. Holland's 
chief assistant, and Alexander W. Drake in charge 
of the art department (the two younger men were 
to work together for forty splendid years), there 
began with Scribners in 1870 the publication of a 
magazine which undoubtedly did more for the cause 
of American letters and a popular knowledge of 
good art, than any other single force. 

Roswell Smith was one of the few publishers I 
have known who made money without the commer- 
cial spirit. He was successful with whatever he un- 
dertook, but The Century Magazine was his chief 
money-maker. His object was to do great and use- 
ful things. He had faith to believe that with what 
measure ye mete it shall be meted unto you. He 
never sought a great magazine feature just because 

[9] 



A GOLDEN AGE OF AUTHORS 

it was great, — War papers or Lincoln Life or any 
other, — never simply as a circulation-builder, but 
always because he believed it to be worth doing, 
and if he were right the public would respond. 
He was a religious man; he opened the annual meet- 
ing of the stockholders of The Century Company 
with prayer. He believed that God would bless him 
in basket and in store if he did his duty. When he 
purchased the Scribner interests he needed in cash 
a little over $100,000, to complete the payment. At 
just that time a railroad was put through some coal 
property which he owned in the Middle West, and 
he sold his mine for $110,000 in cash. There was 
nothing remarkable about it to him; he needed the 
money, and the Power which he depended on, and 
which always helped him, saw that he had it. And 
the years that Roswell Smith opened the annual 
meeting with prayer were the best years the com- 
pany ever had. 

Going with Roswell Smith to visit Dr. Holland 
long before becoming connected with the house, I 
remember the doctor's kindly encouragement of my 
youthful poetic efforts, and Mr. Smith's endeavor to 
switch me into a business path. But like some other 
publishers he was inclined to be a little envious of 
editors and writers. He wrote two short stories for 
St. Nicholas, and although he had called me down 

[10] 



ROSWELL SMITH 

for writing poetry, he once produced a poem. It 
turned out to be a sort of drinking song, and it never 
would do for Roswell Smith to print a drinking song, 
so he called his poem, *' What the Devil Said to the 
Young Man," which effectually disguised it. 

Roswell Smith was largely responsible for two 
great improvements in magazine postal matters, 
pre-payment of postage by the publishers and mail- 
ing in bulk, paying at the post-office for a bag of 
magazines and not being obliged to put a stamp on 
each unit in it. When Scribner's Monthly began, 
magazine subscribers paid their own postage quar- 
terly, and it was a nuisance to hand out twelve 
cents or seventeen cents every once in a while over 
the post-office counter. But as few people took more 
than one magazine and a weekly religious paper, it 
was not as much of a nuisance as it would be to-day 
when nearly every household is apt to take in half 
a dozen periodicals. Other publishers opposed the 
change — the public was already paying the post- 
age, why should the charge be transferred to the 
publisher .f^ Roswell Smith was far-seeing enough to 
know that pre-payment by publishers would remove 
one of the fences between the magazine office and 
the public, that magazines would be more popular 
and that the publishers would get back their money 
several times over, 

[11] 



A GOLDEN AGE OF AUTHORS 

Wlien Congress takes up the question of raising 
the rates of postage on magazines — a favorite 
pastime of Congress — not enough consideration 
is given to the enormous first-class mail that is 
created by the magazines, the subscriptions sent in 
and the receipts sent out and all the correspondence 
referring to them, the millions of answers to ad- 
vertisements and the advertisers' replies, the orders 
sent in from these replies, and the goods sent out by 
the advertisers; the manuscripts sent back and forth 
at high postal rates — about as many "back" as 
"forth." No business produces so much postage 
revenue in subsidiary ways. 

I remember my first morning in the office, helping 
Roswell Smith to open the mail. It was not so large 
then that except in the subscription season he could 
not give personal attention to every business query. 
Now it takes several people to care for the morning 
mail. I was soon put on the publicity work of St. 
Nicholas; that and publicity work for The Century 
and later the Dictionary and the many books, was 
one of my jobs for years. And I thoroughly enjoyed 
it. To write an advertisement is n't quite like writ- 
ing a sonnet, but there is a satisfaction in doing it 
well, in stating facts honestly, in making people 
interested in what you tell them. A letter once 

[12] 




ROSWELL SMITH 



THE PUBLISHER 

came from a man saying that he Hked everything 
we did and the way we did it — a letter which gave 
me much comfort. 

Nobody should seek to be a publisher unless he 
loves books and wants to have to do with them. If 
one wants to make money, let him go into the steel 
business or into something in which there is money 
to be made, for there is very little in books and 
magazines unless they are pushed in a purely com- 
mercial spirit, and if they are — why, then it were 
much better not to publish them at all. There are 
magazines to-day which the world would be better 
off without. Unfortunately the business has at- 
tracted men who have no ambition in the field of 
literature or culture, whose product is sold in great 
quantities and with about the same spirit as if it 
were bricks or clams, — and this is said without 
intended offense to good men who are marketing 
those useful commodities. 

The young man who wants to fit himseK to be 
an editor or a publisher cannot learn too much, — 
there is no limit to the subjects that may later come 
before him. 

He must know literature. When we were prepar- 
ing Theodore Roosevelt's "Ranch Life and the 
Hunting Trail" in 1888, — the make-up was in my 
hands, — Mr. Roosevelt sent in a verse to be 

[13] 



A GOLDEN AGE OF AUTHORS 

placed on the leaf before the opening page. He did 
not give the name of the author or the name of the 
poem, and I wrote to him to find out. Think of my 
not knowing this was from Browning's "Saul"! 

"Oh, our manhood's prime vigor! No spirit feels waste, 
Not a muscle is stopped in its playing nor sinew unbraced. 
Oh, the wild joys of living! . . ." 

I was thoroughly ashamed of my ignorance and the 
shame has lasted for thirty years. That verse was a 
favorite text with Mr. Roosevelt all through his 
wondrously busy life. 

And the young publisher should know political 
economy as well as literature. As a young man, I 
breakfasted in London with Mr. James Bryce, — 
he was not yet a peer. He was preparing to write 
"The American Commonwealth" and he asked me 
many questions about American election affairs, 
especially town-meetings. Some I could answer, 
but not all. Alas! I had never attended a town- 
meeting. 



CHAPTER II 

New York in the seventies — Mary L. Booth's receptions — Edwin 
Booth — Richard Harding Davis — Ion Perdicaris — Back to 
Edgar Allan Poe — General Sherman — The Scribner firm — 
First women clerks — R. L. Stevenson — Frank R. Stockton — Wil- 
Ham Carey — Helen Hunt Jackson 

The New York where I went to live in 1878 was a 
very different city from the one we know to-day. 
There were no sky-scrapers, and by reason of it the 
city seemed more flooded with sunshine (or was that 
youth?); the peremptory tinkle of the telephone 
bell had not become an interrupter of confidences; 
no automobiles went about the streets; people were 
sometimes run over by cabs or trucks or horse-cars, 
but in a more leisurely and less dangerous way. The 
horses drew the cars far off uptown where nobody 
lived and you wondered where the cars went and 
why. The upper West Side streets were cut through 
great rocks where goats dwelt, and to the children 
seemed like the Swiss chamois which they read 
about. The first apartment-house (it still stands in 
East Eighteenth Street) had only just been built. 
If you did not keep house in a brown-stone front 
(it seemed as if there must be a law requiring every 
house to be faced with that gloomy surface) you 
boarded in one. 

[15 1 



A GOLDEN AGE OF AUTHORS 

Fifth Avenue was all residences to Twenty-third 
Street; and beyond Fifty-ninth, the east side of the 
street; now miUionaires' row, was as great a waste 
as the upper West Side. I could have bought land 
there that would have made me a little Croesus. 
Others did. 

We made New Years' calls — in tall hats and 
"Prince Albert" coats. We went forth, men only, 
at 10 A.M. and worked till dark; then went home 
and changed into evening clothes and went at it 
again until midnight. The number of calls was in- 
credible, unbelievable to-day — sixty, eighty, and 
more. If the people were not receiving they hung out 
a basket, you dropped in a card and it "counted." 
You visited every one you ever knew and many you 
did not see again until another New Year came 
around. Of course I called on many women writers 
and writers' wives and artists' wives and other pub- 
lishers' wives and the wives of the men in my oJflBce. 
When you went to bed you had eaten at least ten 
plates of salad, twenty ices, thirty pieces of cake, 
and had drunk — well, that depended upon your- 
self. If you were "strictly temperate" you might 
have consumed not more than five or ten glasses of 
wine through the day. Some drank all they could 
hold, and if they could hold a great deal and the 
cowp de grace did not come until late in the festivi- 

[16] 



MORRIS PHILLIPS 

ties, they managed to get through with an untar- 
nished shield. One may be glad that the day of the 
New Years' call passed long ago. When it passed 
it went out suddenly. One year you made calls, 
the next year you did not — nobody did, and you 
never heard of it again. 

I felt a kind of connection in these days with 
the early writers, Bryant and Halleck and Willis 
through Morris Phillips, whom I knew. He must 
have been a grandson of General Morris, founder 
of the New York Mirror. He was editor of the 
Home Journal, a society paper founded by Willis, 
and a successor to the Mirror. Thomas Bailey Al- 
drich was once its assistant editor. I saw Phillips 
often at the Saturday evenings of Miss Mary L. 
Booth, editor of Harper's Bazar, in her home in the 
thinly populated quarter of Fifty-ninth Street and 
Park Avenue. Those weekly receptions, with sim- 
ple refreshments of lemonade, ice-cream and cake, 
attracted the literary people of the time, — Mrs. 
Mary Mapes Dodge, Stockton, Stedman, Stoddard, 
Edgar Fawcett. The hostess's cousin, Edwin Booth, 
came in sometimes; a sad, gloomy man he was then, 
— it was not long since his wild young brother had 
slain Lincoln. I remember him standing with folded 
arms in a corner, talking little. He told me that such 
a party was agony to him, for his hearing was so 

[ 17] 



A GOLDEN AGE OF AUTHORS 

painfully acute that he could hear even a whisper 
across the room — and everybody talked at once at 
Miss Booth's. Later, I came to know him well and 
love him, in the days of his retirement at The Play- 
ers, which he had founded and furnished to the 
last teaspoon, as a place where men of his profession, 
who frequently knew few people in any other walk 
of life, should meet authors and artists and men of 
various pursuits. 

When Richard Harding Davis was elected into The 
Players a few men were asked to meet him, includ- 
ing Mr. Booth. Davis noticed that the walls were 
covered with old playbills which he was told had 
been presented by the members. Thoughtlessly, 
but with good intention, he said, "Why, I have an 
interesting theatrical relic which I would like to 
give to the club. It is the playbill used at Ford's 
Theater in Washington on the night that Lincoln 
was — " Mr. Booth threw up his hands and turned 
away. 

I heard the end of that incident only a little while 
ago. I had told the story in a lecture before the 
School of Journalism in Columbia, and, after it, 
Talcott Williams, director of the school, told me 
that Lawrence Barrett had given him the rest of 
the story. When Mr. Booth went upstairs to his 
room, Davis followed him, to apologize for his 

[18] 



EDWIN BOOTH 

thoughtlessness. "Do not apologize," said Mr. 
Booth, — "I really took satisfaction in your for- 
getting. It shows that at last there are some people 
in the world who do not associate me with Lincoln's 
death." 

I was present at the Academy of Music on the 
night that Booth played lago to Salvini's Othello, 
the night that the illness first became apparent that 
caused his death, a gradual loss of the power of 
locomotion. He stumbled over the chain which 
guarded the footlights. Salvini held the attention of 
the audience, while others gathered around Mr. 
Booth and helped him to a seat. It was a sad night 
for the friends of the great actor — the greatest 
that our country has ever produced. 

Mr. Booth's most intimate friend for many years 
was William Bispham, and in his family my cousin, 
Katharine B. Wood, made her home. Miss Wood, 
whose knowledge of Shakespeare and of the play- 
wrights of his century was unsurpassed, was put in 
charge of the readers and of the work of collecting 
quotations for The Century Dictionary, and the 
result of her labors may be seen now in the many 
appropriate quotations with which the book 
abounds — quotations so good that in many cases 
they act as definitions. If Miss Wood had had her 
way many more would have been included. Mr. 

[ 19 ] 



A GOLDEN AGE OF AUTHORS 

Booth knew Miss Wood well, through his intimacy 
with Mr. Bispham, and when I joined The Players in 
1889 he was very kind to me, because he thought 
I looked like my cousin. He made me feel that I 
was his guest in the beautiful club which he had 
founded and where he passed his last years. 

Others besides Miss Mary L. Booth who had 
"literary" receptions in those days were Dr. Hol- 
land, Mrs. Botta, and "Aunt Fanny" Barrow — 
she wrote children's books under the name of 
"Aunt Fanny." I remember an afternoon reception 
at Mrs. Barrow's to meet Ion Perdicaris, the Greek- 
American resident of Tangier, who, years after, was 
captured and held for ransom by the brigand 
Raisuli, and Secretary Hay's famous dispatch, 
"Perdicaris alive or Raisuli dead," will be well re- 
membered. Perdicaris did come out alive, but it 
cost him a large ransom. His visiting cards were 
very cosmopolitan, — in one corner "Tangier, Mo- 
rocco," in the other "Trenton, New Jersey." When 
"Aunt Fanny" had her tea, Mr. and Mrs. Perdi- 
caris had come to New York to give Mrs. Perdicaris's 
daughter an opening on the stage. Mr. Perdicaris 
wrote the play and painted an enormous allegorical 
picture, as large as a drop-curtain, which as part 
of the play was unveiled in the last act. He engaged 

[20 1 



ION PERDICARIS 

a supporting company, hired the Fifth Avenue 
Theater, and all literary New York went on Mon- 
day night. It ran till Thursday and cost him 
$30,000. I visited him later in Tangier; the great 
picture was installed in the house, running up 
through two stories. 

Perdicaris did some work on an autobiography 
not long ago. It would have been more interesting 
if it had contained a full account of his experiences 
in Morocco, but he was so hurt by his treatment by 
Raisuli, whom he had long known, and after he him- 
self had spent a lifetime caring for the people of 
Tangier and its neighborhood, feeding the hungry, 
bringing comfort to the captives in the hideous 
prison-pens, that he could not bring himself to 
write with any fullness of a land which had shown 
him such ingratitude. 

I can go back vicariously in New York before the 
days of Dr. Holland and "Aunt Fanny" Barrow — 
back to the time when Edgar Allan Poe was editing 
a paper and not long after he had written **The 
Raven" and sold it for ten dollars. My father-in- 
law, Morris W. Smith, was a young man then, just 
beginning a business life in New York, sweeping 
out the store, and he lived in the same boarding- 
house with Poe, who was in the depths of poverty. 
Each boarder had to heat his own room, and my 

[21] 



A GOLDEN AGE OF AUTHORS 

father-in-law lent Poe a stove to keep him warm, 
and sometimes helped him out with his board 
money. 

Had I been wise enough to keep a diary these 
recollections would be more worth while. How easy 
it would have been! Between 1882 and 1894 I lived 
in Yonkers, a suburb of New York, and I could have 
spent the haK-hour on the train every evening mak- 
ing notes of the interesting happenings of the day 
and of the people who came in — so many clever 
people! I have found that those who do things in 
the world, who write or who are men and women of 
action, are generally the best talkers. I shall never 
forget General Sherman, as he stood before Gilder's 
fire for two hours one afternoon, — a tall, lank fig- 
ure, his hands under his coat-tails, — and marched 
through Georgia. Why could we not have had a 
stenographer behind the door, or why did not some 
of us write down our recollections of that talk.^^ I 
suppose because such happenings were frequent 
— it was all in the day's work. And Paderewski is 
another good talker, and perhaps with a wider 
knowledge of the world than had General Sherman. 
He speaks seven languages with equal ease — "if 
one is a Pole any other language except Chinese is 
child's play." He can talk about breeding chickens 

[ 22 ] 



THE CENTURY 

or the curves of the Parthenon, and he is a capital 
story-teller. 

As the years went on, Roswell Smith began to 
publish books as well as magazines — so many 
grew naturally out of serial publication in his maga- 
zines; and the younger Charles Scribner, who had 
succeeded his father and an elder brother, who died 
young, feeling perhaps that his was the book-house, 
made Roswell Smith an offer either to buy him out 
or sell out to him. Mr. Smith instantly chose the 
latter. At the same time. Dr. Holland, believing 
that his life would not be long, sold his stock to the 
younger men and to Mr. Smith. The name of the 
magazine was changed to The Century and the com- 
pany to The Century Company. (It was Gilder's 
suggestion from the Century Club.) This was in the 
autumn of 1881. To change the name of the maga- 
zine seemed at first a serious matter, but it did not 
create a ripple; the new name was printed in red 
several times across the old on the cover, and in 
a few months it took its place as the real name. 

Five years later the Scribner firm started their 
own periodical Scribner's Magazine, which has been 
especially strong in fiction and in the good work 
of the younger American authors. Its illustrations 
under Mr. Joseph H. Chapin's management have 

f 23 1 



A GOLDEN AGE OF AUTHORS 

been admirable. Probably Theodore Roosevelt's 
African series has been its most noteworthy serial. 
I remember standing in the window of Mr. Robert 
Bridges's office — he was assistant editor of the 
magazine at the time, now the editor — and watch- 
ing the procession pass up Fifth Avenue, Theodore 
Roosevelt the figure of honor. It was when he re- 
turned from Africa and he had begun to send the 
material of his African series to Bridges for serial 
publication. Bridges told me afterwards that when 
Mr. Roosevelt was back in this country he never 
failed to return every proof sent to him the day it 
was received. When young people tell me they are 
not able to answer a letter until some days have 
passed because they are "busy," I think of Mr. 
Roosevelt and a few other "busy" men I have 
known, who manage somehow to answer their 
letters on the day they are received, barring emer- 
gencies. 

For the first three years of my connection with 
the company the office was on the third and fourth 
floors of the building at 743 Broadway, the Scrib- 
ner firm having their store on the ground floor. The 
stairs were hard for Dr. Holland, who developed a 
heart trouble (he died of angina pectoris in Novem- 
ber, 1881). His office was in the north front corner 

[ 24 ] 




DR. J. G. HOLLAND 



WOMEN AS CLERKS 

on the third floor, with Gilder and Robert Un- 
derwood Johnson, assistant editors, close by. The 
next room was the editorial quarters of St. Nicho- 
las, the children's magazine which had been started 
in 1873. Roswell Smith had a small room in the 
rear, and the rest of us including a number of 
women clerks were scattered about the large central 
room. 

Roswell Smith was one of the first business men 
to employ women in nearly every clerical capacity. 
At that time there was hardly a woman in the finan- 
cial quarter of New York. I was a young man in an 
insurance office in Hartford, Connecticut, when the 
first woman clerk known in the Hartford insurance 
business went to work in a near-by office. And if her 
brother had not been with her it would hardly have 
been considered respectable. Roswell Smith found 
that not only did women do good work — every- 
body knows it now — were careful and methodical, 
but that they were contented to stay in one place 
if it was a good place. Young men are apt to be 
more ambitious — and no blame to them — and 
want to move up, but a magazine office has some 
tasks, like keeping lists of subscribers, that it is 
very desirable to have people continue in for a long 
time, for their familiarity with the lists makes them 
valuable. I believe that The Century, since it was 

[25] 



A GOLDEN AGE OF AUTHORS 

established nearly fifty years ago, has had only 
three women, not including their helpers, in charge 
of its subscription lists. 

A clerk in a publishing oflBce does not always ac- 
quire a complete education, notwithstanding the 
somewhat rarefied atmosphere in which he lives. 
The Atlantic printed recently an amusing letter 
written to one of its readers by the publishers of 
The Smart Set regretting their inability to tell her 
whether there was such a magazine as The Atlantic 
or not — they had never heard of it. Doubtless 
that letter was the work of some young person 
in The Smart Set office, perhaps a little too young 
to be entrusted with the task of answering in- 
quiries. 

I recall the case of a young woman, a new clerk, 
who came to me and said, "I notice that The Cen- 
tury prints considerable poetry each month." I 
complimented her on her keen observation. "I used 
to write pretty good poetry," she continued, "when 
I was in the high school, and I think perhaps I could 
furnish the magazine with all it wants, and then you 
could increase my salary. It might appear under 
different names." At that moment what Mr. Alden 
once wrote of an editor was applicable to a publisher : 
"When the unprecedented is presented to his mind 
he is likely at first to be bewildered." She did not 

[26] 



ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON 

stay with us long, but sometimes as I pick up my 
valued contemporaries I say to myself, "Well, she 
got her job." 

Another clerk, a young man, was behind the 
counter one day when a stranger called and asked 
if any stories were wanted. He was a rough-looking 
stranger, who, it seems, had just come off an emi- 
grant ship. Anything he cared to leave would be 
handed to the editors, the boy told him. The 
stranger turned and went out; The Century had 
lost Robert Louis Stevenson! 

Years after, when it had won him back, Stevenson 
told Gilder of this call, and looking at him sharply 
from head to foot, said, "I don't know but it was 
you I saw. Yes, I think it was you, now that I look 
at you." But Gilder was n't the man, though he was 
properly frightened by Stevenson's well-feigned 
recognition. He proved an alibi, for he was in Eu- 
rope at the time, but he said afterward that he 
would have made the same answer to Stevenson 
that the clerk made. 

I never saw Stevenson. It was after we had moved 
to Union Square that one day meeting Henry C. 
Bunner, editor of Puck, as I was on my way to 
luncheon, he hailed me with "Oh, Ellsworth, go 
over to Brentano's and get a book in the Sea-Side 
Library called 'The New Arabian Nights,' by a 

[27] 



A GOLDEN AGE OF AUTHORS 

new man named Stevenson." That was a happy 
meeting with "the new man named Stevenson." 

In The Century for February, 1883, there ap- 
peared an article in the department "Literature" 
on Stevenson's *'New Arabian Nights," beginning: 
"A few months ago an Enghsh book made its 
appearance in this country, handicapped with the 
name of *New Arabian Nights.' It was, for a time, 
no more warmly welcomed than might have been 
the *New Rabelais' or 'A Nineteenth Century 
Nibelungen Lied ' or ' Robinson Crusoe ' with all the 
modern improvements. Then, by and by, one or 
two of the chorus of indolent reviewers glanced at 
the first page, read the second, and of a sudden 
found themselves bolting the rest of the book, and 
finding stomach for it all. . . . This new feast has 
a fine, literary smack to it. . . . Any one who reads 
the 'Nights' and the four stories that are bound 
with them must be struck by the author's versa- 
tility, his power of picturesque description, his skill 
in drawing character with haK a touch, and his all- 
pervading humor." Which indicates that the writer 
of The Century's "Literature" department did not 
lack appreciation of quality. 

With the issue for November, 1883, Stevenson's 
"The Silverado Squatters, Sketches from a Cali- 
fornia Mountain," began as a serial in The Century. 

[28 ] 



FRANK R. STOCKTON 

Looking this up in the index to get the exact date 
I find another contribution of Stevenson's — long- 
forgotten, perhaps. It was in *' Bric-a-brac," a de- 
partment which printed the very best humor of the 
day (one recalls Bunner's classic fooling, printed in 
that department, "Home Sweet Home," as Whit- 
man and Swinburne and Bret Harte and others 
would have written it) . In " Bric-a-brac " for March, 
1885, appears the following: 

"Mr. Robert Louis Stevenson writes to a friend 
who had just left England for America: 'You will 
meet Stockton: 

"*If I my Stockton should forget, 
It would be sheer depravity. 
For I went down with the Thomas Hyhe, 
And up with the Negative Gravity.' " 

Stockton was one of the assistant editors of St. 
Nicholas when I joined the office force, working un- 
der Mrs. Mary Mapes Dodge and alongside Wil- 
liam Fayal Clarke, who is now the editor and is 
carrying on the best traditions of Mrs. Dodge, with 
sympathetic comprehension, also, of the needs and 
tastes and especially the patriotic impulses of the 
American young folk of to-day. Stockton's "Rud- 
der Grange" stories had appeared at odd times in 
Scribner's Monthly, the first in November, 1874; 
and they were gathered into a book by the Scrib- 

[ 29 1 



A GOLDEN AGE OF AUTHORS 

ner firm in 1879. It was at about this time that 
Stockton left St. Nicholas to make authorship 
his profession. As to "Rudder Grange" it may be 
said that the author himself had never lived in a 
deserted canal boat (though he was always moving 
into odd suburban places), but he knew some people 
who did and he made up "Rudder Grange" out of 
what might have happened to them. It has always 
seemed to me that "Rudder Grange" was an ex- 
ample of perfect humor, at least if the faculty of 
getting enjoyment from it by repeated readings is 
a test. Pomona's "'I was a-lookin' at the moon, 
sir, when pop! the chair bounced, and out I went' " 
is as funny to me now as it was when I read it for 
the first time. And the reading aloud of that remark- 
able serving-maid — " ' Ha, ha ! Lord Mar mont 
thun der ed.'" "*My conscience!' said I to Eu- 
phemia, * can't that girl be stopped?'" 

As may be imagined from his works, Frank Stock- 
ton was a man of great sweetness, full of lovable 
qualities. He was slightly lame and never seemed to 
be in very good health, and it was a great delight 
to him and to Mrs. Stockton to go away on frequent 
trips to Nassau or to Europe, and to write up 
their experiences. He looked at life in a beautiful 
way; he was kind and every one was kind to him, 
and he gathered only flowers as he went along. 

[30] 



WILLIAM CAREY 

Stockton's most famous story was "The Lady, or 
the Tiger? " which appeared in The Century for 
November, 1882. Heaven knows how many lan- 
guages it has been translated into and how many 
solutions of the puzzle have been offered. Stockton 
himself never made or wanted to make a solution 
— he was satisfied to write the story. Its success was 
perhaps helped by the title, and for that Will Carey, 
of The Century editorial room, was responsible. 
Stockton had called it " The King's Arena " and had 
gone away to Europe leaving it to be published. 
The editors cabled asking permission to change the 
name to Carey's suggested title, "The Lady, or the 
Tiger?" 

William Carey was a very clever young man who 
died in his early forties — more than clever; Mark 
Twain called him the wittiest man he ever knew. 
He was a little inclined to stoutness, which usually 
makes for good humor, but not necessarily for wit. 
He had a face that always wore a smile, and he 
knew everybody and was universally loved. He had 
charge of proofs, sending them back and forth 
between author and printer, and seeing that the 
forms of The Century went to press on the proper 
date. His desk was near the door in the editorial 
room and few came in who did not stop there for a 
chat before going on to more serious business with 

[31] 



A GOLDEN AGE OF AUTHORS 

one of the editors. Sometimes they remained a long 
time. A great general came in one day and stopped 
for a few light words — they were always on tap 
at Carey's desk. "What do you say to strolling up 
to Delmonico's for luncheon?" said the general. 
Carey was agreeable; luncheon was apt to be some- 
thing of a rite with him, not to be abused by a bowl 
of crackers and milk in any cheap joint. At about 
half past three they returned, and the great general 
was ready to attend to less important matters with 
the editors. 

Carey would always remember to do the right 
thing, to get the right present, to send the right book 
for a "bread-and-butter" gift. If the wives of any 
of the office force were out of town and wanted 
shopping done, they seldom troubled their hus- 
bands, always Carey. I can see him now walking 
along Forty-second Street one hot summer day, 
piloting George W. Cable and his family to the 
Grand Central Station, a Cable child holding each 
hand and one or two following behind. It was when 
the Cables moved from New Orleans to Northamp- 
ton, Massachusetts; and who so able to help in the 
migration as Carey.? It was suspected at the time 
that Carey had been guilty of taking some of the 
younger Cables — who knew little of the frivolities 
of the world nor had possibilities of acquiring much 

[32] 



WILLIAM CAREY 

further knowledge — to a matinee. But I hesitate 
even now to make this known. 

When an acquaintance of mine was growing deaf 
some one asked him, in Carey's presence, if he 
understood German. "Understand German!" broke 
in Carey, "why, bless your soul, he does n't under- 
stand English." 

He was ill when a mutual friend was to be mar- 
ried, and for the third time; "Ah," said Carey, "I 
am so sorry I can't be there. I have always wanted 

to go to one of 's weddings." The cutting down 

of his vacation one summer was cheerfully met: 
"Never mind, half a loaf, you know." One day 
Brander Matthews came into the office wearing a 
very short overcoat which allowed some six inches 
of the tail of his undercoat to show. Being twitted, 
he explained that he had bought the undercoat in 
Paris and the overcoat had been ordered from 
London. "Ah," said Carey, "another 'Tale of Two 
Cities.'" 

The sale after his death, of the autograph letters, 
autographed books and manuscripts which Carey 
had preserved, will be long remembered by collec- 
tors. There were over seven hundred items in the 
collection. Few living American authors were un- 
represented; for had not Carey been sending them 
proofs and getting back letters for twenty years .^ 

[33] 



A GOLDEN AGE OF AUTHORS 

Among the volumes of letters from James Whit- 
comb Riley, which his nephew Edmund H. Eitel 
is now editing, are more than fifty to Carey — all 
of them whimsical, afiFectionate. 

In London literary circles — and I think Carey 
was never in London but once and then only for a 
short time — he made lasting friends as easily as 
in New York. Austin Dobson wrote and dedicated 
a poem to him. On this same European trip Carey 
was to join me in Rome. My wife and I, with three 
children — the oldest then ten years of age — and 
a governess, had spent the winter in Mediterranean 
countries. At Naples the older little girl fell ill. We 
had made the ascent of Vesuvius on the day of a 
serious eruption and in the climb from the funicular 
railway to the crater we were all more or less over- 
come by the sulphur-impregnated smoke from the 
volcano. We thought this was the cause of the little 
girl's illness, but as she did not grow better, we 
took the train for Rome, where there was an Ameri- 
can doctor. On his first call came the shock of our 
lives. He was sorry to have to tell us that in all 
probability our daughter had contracted smallpox, 
but he could not be sure until the next day. The 
only cheer he left with us was the announcement 
that if his fears were realized he would take the 
patient at once to his own apartment (allowable in 

[34] 



K 




WILLIAM CAREY AT TWENTY-FIVE AND AT FORTY 

Mark Twain called him the wittiest man he ever knew 



WILLIAM CAREY 

Rome, where the thought of a pest-house was tor- 
ture) and give her back to us in a few weeks. Then 
came Carey, full of optimism, comforting. He took 
the other two children off for the afternoon, he was 
with us through the evening; at bedtime he made 
me go with him for a walk over Rome, — from the 
Villa Borghese to the Colosseum, through the poor 
quarter, around St. Peter's, up the Janiculum, — 
all over the city we tramped and he talked. And 
after the burden was lifted and the case proved to 
be only a rather serious form of measles, he was un- 
tiring in his efforts to keep us amused and the chil- 
dren happy. 

If one analyzes the quality which William Carey 
possessed of conferring happiness as he went along, 
one finds — beyond the bonhomie, the repartee 
which always satisfied and never hurt, the flashes 
of wit that were long remembered — the greater 
qualities of kindliness and thoughtfulness, the go- 
ing out of his way to give pleasure to others. All 
these he had to a degree which I have never seen so 
strongly developed in any human being. 

The Boys' Club of Avenue A was one of the 
chief mourners when he died, and the summer 
camp of the club, paid for by Carey's friends and 
in his memory, is known as "The William Carey 
Camp.'* 

[ 35 ] 



A GOLDEN AGE OF AUTHORS 

It was in "the old office" as we called it, at 743 
Broadway, that I remember seeing Helen Hunt 
Jackson. She came running upstairs one morning 
overflowing with laughter, and Dr. Holland asked 
her what had so amused her. She was in New York 
trying to awaken an interest in the Indians. "Oh, 
those Bostonians," she said; "I just met a Boston 
man on the street, and he asked me how I was get- 
ting on with my work in New York. 'Slowly,' I told 
him, — and said the Boston man, *Well, I should 
think after that editorial in yesterday's Boston 
Advertiser, everybody in New York would be 
interested!'" 

Mrs. Jackson was a most prolific writer of fiction, 
poems, essays, travel articles, and every conceivable 
form of literature. Dr. Holland is said to have once 
had an idea of issuing a number of Scribner's 
Monthly made up entirely of her work. She wrote 
the Saxe Holm stories and at least two of the novels 
in the anonymous "No Name" series which Roberts 
Brothers so successfully published. One of them was 
"Mercy Philbrick's Choice." 

The Saxe Holm stories were famous in their day. 
I have a number of letters from Mrs. Jackson to 
Dr. Holland, most of them referring to their writing. 
It was her intention at first to have "Mercy Phil- 
brick's Choice " appear over the Saxe Holm name, 

[36] 



HELEN HUNT JACKSON 

but for some reason she changed her mind, perhaps 
because the letters indicate that the magazine did 
not want it for a serial. She shows her pleasure later 
in the praise which came to "Mercy Philbrick's 
Choice" — "very much stronger than any of the 
Saxe Holm stories and far better written" was one 
opinion; "the style is exquisite" was another. 

In June, 1876, Mrs. Jackson considered the publi- 
cation of an article in the New York Tribune which 
was to be called "A History of the Claimants," in 
which she would show up various people who said 
they wrote the Saxe Holm stories: "this whole 
account to be signed, sealed, and delivered by Saxe 
Holm himself, herseK, itself, themselves, and pub- 
lished by authority. It is really time to put a stop 

to and the rest. . . . Three women in different 

parts of the country all claiming to be the author 
of stories they never wrote ! I think the article would 
be huge fun, besides advertising the new story 
splendidly." 

For some reason Mrs. Jackson did not wish the 
public to know that she was Saxe Holm. It was a 
literary puzzle once, but the Saxe Holm stories have 
not lived like "Ramona," and it is on that book 
that Helen Hunt Jackson's reputation will rest. 



CHAPTER III 

American literature in 1870 — Harper's Magazine — The first num- 
ber of the new Scrihner's Monthly — Its contemporaries — Charles 
Dudley Warner — The Great South papers — George W. Cable — 
William Dean Howells 

When Scribner's Monthly began, in 1870, American 
literature, except for that furnished by the group of 
men writing in or near Boston, was at a low ebb, 
and even in Boston very little fiction was being pro- 
duced. Professor Pattee in his "History of Ameri- 
can Literature since 1870" says: ''No wonder that 
the book reviewer of Harper's Magazine for May, 
1870, with nothing better before him than 'Miss 
Van Kortland,' Anonymous; 'Hedged In,' by Miss 
Phelps; and 'Askaros Kassis,' by De Leon, should 
have begun his review, ' We are so weary of depend- 
ing on England, France, and Germany for fiction 
and so hungry for some genuine American ro- 
mance, that we are not inclined to read very criti- 
cally the three characteristic American novels which 
lie on our table.'" 

Poe, Irving, Cooper, and Hawthorne had passed; 
Mark Twain had just begun; the nearest that How- 
ells had come to fiction was in the book, "No 
Love Lost; a Romance of Travel," really a long 

[38] 



AMERICAN LITERATURE IN 1870 

poem in hexameters, published in 1868. Bret Harte's 
first book of fiction, "The Luck of Roaring Camp, 
and Other Sketches," came in 1870. It is easy to 
see why Professor Pattee began his study of mod- 
ern American hterature with that year, for it marked 
a dividing fine between the old and the new, and 
Scribner's Monthly, born in 1870, did a goodly 
share toward helping on the renaissance. 

The plain people in America were only just be- 
ginning to find out that they could write. Great 
fiction writers had been living and writing in Eng- 
land, Dickens, Thackeray, Wilkie Collins, George 
Eliot, Charles Kingsley, Charles Reade, TroUope. 
(Dickens died the year that Scribner's Monthly 
began.) The output of these writers was so remark- 
able that they may be said to have kept back the 
rest of the world. And yet I heard an author say 
not long ago that it was his belief that if any one 
sent to a publisher to-day the kind of novel that 
Thackeray and Dickens produced, they would be 
declined, nor would the public care for them if they 
appeared. I could not agree with him. When I was 
reading book manuscripts if a new ''Vanity Fair " 
or "David Copperfield" had turned up among them 
I could not imagine hesitating very long over it, nor 
a public that would not extend a welcoming hand. 

When Scribner's Monthly came into being Har- 
[39] 



A GOLDEN AGE OF AUTHORS 

per's Magazine had been for years printing the 
novels of these writers in serial form, paying good 
prices for advance sheets with right of use. There 
was no international copyright in those days; any 
publisher could bring out the book as soon as the 
last installment appeared in a magazine. The Har- 
pers paid £1250 for serial rights in '* Great Expec- 
tations," and Charles Reade was considered nearly 
as much of a card as Charles Dickens, for he re- 
ceived £1000 for "The Woman Hater." Thackeray 
evidently was not very highly regarded, for he had 
only one hundred dollars a month for "The Vir- 
ginians." These relative prices are interesting to- 
day, after the place of each author has been fixed 
in the world's esteem. 

It is said that just after the Civil War Harper's 
Weekly fell off in circulation to such an extent that 
its owners considered the advisability of discon- 
tinuing it, but the publication of Dickens's "Our 
Mutual Friend" kept the Weekly's head above 
water for six months, and then Wilkie Collins's 
"Armadale" was begun, and with the very first 
installment that great mystery story began to send 
up the circulation until it soon reached its war- 
time figure. Dickens and Wilkie Collins are not in 
the same class to-day, but in life Collins was the 
better circulation-builder of the two. 

[40] 



HARPER'S MAGAZINE 

Harper's Magazine had run Macaulay's ''His- 
tory of England" as a serial, and had balanced that 
great piece of historical writing with John S. C. Ab- 
bott's ''Napoleon," criticized even on publication 
for its "fairy tales of history." But what could be 
done with an author who sent word to his publish- 
ers that " he made every line he wrote the sub- 
ject of prayer, and what he wrote he believed to be 
the truth, and he could make no changes"? ^ 

Those of us who were brought up on the bound 
volumes of Harper's will remember also the papers 
by "Porte Crayon," David Hunter Strother, who 
had come out of the Civil War as a brevetted brig- 
adier-general in the Union Army — delightful de- 
scriptions they were of life in the Virginia moun- 
tains, with the author's own quaint illustrations. 

The new Scribner's Monthly was to be a force 
in building up American literature, but for its 
first year's serials, to so low a point had native fic- 
tion fallen, its conductors had to look to Great Brit- 
ain, and George MacDonald and Mrs. Oliphant, 
both Scotch by birth, were engaged. The first num- 
ber opened with an anonymous poem (it was writ- 
ten by Dr. Holland) "Jeremy Train — His Drive." 

^ For several of these statements in regard to the Harper publi- 
cations I am indebted to The House of Harper, by J. H. Harper. 

[41] 



A GOLDEN AGE OF AUTHORS 

It covered, with its thirteen illustrations, seventeen 
and a half pages. Bunner's "The Way to Arcady," 
which, years after, was turned down because of its 
length, would not have occupied one third the 
number of pages. 

The first prose article was instructive, "The Bot- 
tom of the Sea," and there were others of a similar 
character. Rebecca Harding Davis began a three- 
part serial, "Natasqua"; there was a very heavy 
gun fired by W. C. Wilkinson, "The Bondage of 
the Pulpit." An announcement of the new magazine 
was the first item in Dr. Holland's department 
"Topics of the Time." The editor's chief interest 
was in this department, where he could print his 
lay sermons which had been so well liked by great 
numbers of people in Timothy Titcomb's "Lessons 
to Young People," "Lessons in Life," etc. His long 
poems had been astonishingly successful. 

Dr. Holland was a natural teacher, and "Topics 
of the Time" gave him an opportunity for all the 
rest of his life to speak his messages of uplift to 
thousands of people. 

Of that first edition of the magazine forty thou- 
sand copies were printed and there were never fewer. 
The circulation increased rapidly. Gilder had a de- 
partment, "The Old Cabinet," lighter than Dr. 
Holland's, where he said whatever came into his 

[42] 



SCRIBNER'S MONTHLY 

mind whether prose or verse. Other departments 
were added from time to time, " Culture and Prog- 
ress," "Home and Society," "The World's Work." 
The latter was edited (and written) for many years 
by Charles Barnard, and I can recall his article sug- 
gesting photography as an occupation for ama- 
teurs. That certainly seems a long time ago. On the 
strength of Barnard's suggestions my wife bought 
me a photographic outfit, and I took pictures of 
everything in sight. 

Some years later I made a trip to the Mediter- 
ranean, with my family, and I took with me the first 
kodak I had ever seen — a long, oblong box which 
made only round pictures, and you pulled a string 
to do it. In Tangier the natives dislike photographs 
— a reproduction of one's Mohammedan self in a 
picture may make trouble for the original in another 
world — and I carried my kodak done up like a 
brown-paper parcel, a small hole in the end for the 
lens, another for the string. It worked fairly well 
excepting that the click sometimes betrayed me. 

Dr. Holland's early "Topics" would not be liked 
to-day, — nor would he write them, — but he 
broadened as the years went on. Life in New York, 
where he rubbed against all kinds of people, and 
above all the unconscious, sweetening influence of 
his young associate. Gilder, did much to change 

[43] 



A GOLDEN AGE OF AUTHORS 

his point of view, opening up the Puritan prison- 
house which he had built for his soul — at any rate 
putting a piazza on it. He always appreciated 
Gilder. Here is a letter from Dr. Holland to Roswell 
Smith, written the year after the magazine started: 
" Gilder ought to have $2500 a year. All of this sum 
over and above $1500 he ought to leave in our 
hands until the close of the year, when it should be 
presented to him in a good bond that will become a 
source of income. He is twenty-eight years old and it 
is time for him to begin in earnest about a fortune." 
Neither Gilder nor any of the "younger men" in 
the place ever made a fortune or thought about it. 
They worked in a happy atmosphere of mutual 
respect and devotion — they were interested in 
great things and in important movements. If Dr. 
Holland's idea had been carried out and two fifths 
of their salaries had been held back for the purchase 
of "a good bond" at the end of the year, perhaps 
they would have saved more money, but families 
increased, home life broadened, entertaining was a 
part of the job, using the money seemed more im- 
portant than putting it into bonds, and the "younger 
man" who saved much out of his income was a rar- 
ity. It did not seem that there could ever be a rainier 
day. The young men had a chance to buy stock 
from time to time, always at a fair market price. 

[ 44 ] 



SCRIBNER'S MONTHLY 



The chief contemporaries of Scribner's Monthly 
at its beginning are its contemporaries to-day, The 
Atlantic and Harper's. It may be interesting to look 
over a list of the writers who f m-nished the material 
for these three magazines at the time Scribner's 
Monthly began its career — not all of the writers, 
for most of them are forgotten, but here is a list of 
the contributors to the volumes for the year 1871 
whose names may still be recalled by most of the 
older magazine readers of to-day: 

Scribner's Monthly 



Elizabeth Akers Allen 
Hans Christian Andersen 
S. G. W. Benjamin 
John Bigelow 
Horace Bushnell 
Alice Cary 
Titus M. Coan 
Susan Coolidge 
Rebecca Harding Davis 
Mary Mapes Dodge 
Edward Eggleston 
Thomas Dunn English 
Washington Gladden 
Gail Hamilton 
J. R. G. Hassard 
I. I. Hayes 
J. T. Headley 

N.P. 



J.G.Holland . 
Helen Hunt Jackson 
Edward King 
G. P. Lathrop 
Benson J. Lossing 
George MacDonald 
Mrs. Oliphant 
Mrs. S. M. B. Piatt 
Abby Sage Richardson 
L. Clark Seelye 
E. C. Stedman 
R. H. Stoddard 
W. O. Stoddard 
Adeline Trafton 
H. T. Tuckerman 
Charles Dudley Warner 
W. C. Wilkinson 
Willis 



[45 ] 



A GOLDEN AGE OF AUTHORS 

There were more than one hundred and fifty of 
them in all. 

The Atlantic Monthly 

Thomas Bailey Aldrich Helen Hunt Jackson 

Edward Atkinson Henry James, Jr. 

Bret Plarte Clarence King 

Alice Gary Lucy Larcom 

R. H. Dana, Jr. Henry W. Longfellow 

J. W. De Forest Louise Chandler Moulton 

George Eliot Mrs. S. M. B. Piatt 

James T. Fields John G. Saxe 

John Fiske E. C. Stedman 

John Hay Bayard Taylor 

T. W. Higginson Celia Thaxter 

Oliver Wendell Holmes Col. George E. Waring 

W. D. Howells John G. Whittier 

* John Hay's "Castilian Days" was printed seri- 
ally and there were serial novels, "A Passionate Pil- 
grim" by Henry James, Jr., and a forgotten novel 
by J. W. De Forest. Bret Harte wrote three short 
stories, including "A Romance of Madrono Hol- 
low." Howells's "Their Wedding Journey" was an 
unforgotten feature, and Holmes's "Dorothy Q" 
another. There was much in that volume of The 
Atlantic that is alive to-day; indeed, of the three 
magazines. Harper's, The Atlantic, and the new 
Scribner's Monthly, certainly The Atlantic ranked 
first in literature.^ 

* In a review of the booklet, The Atlantic Monthly and Its Makers^ 

[46 ] 



HARPER'S MAGAZINE 

Harper's Magazine 

Lyman Abbott Benson J. Lossing 

J. S. C. Abbott Justin McCarthy 

Junius Henri Browne "Petroleum V. Nasby" 

S. S. Conant William C. Prime 

Moneure D. Conway John G. Saxe 

Dinah Mulock Craik Harriet Prescott Spofford 

James De Mille R. H. Stoddard 

Thomas Dunn English Bayard Taylor 

Julian Hawthorne Thurlow Weed 

The leading serial novel in this volume of Har- 
per's was "The American Baron" by James De 
Mille. Lyman Abbott's contributions were practi- 
cal, "Glass-blowing as a Fine Art," and "The Re- 

recently issued, the New York Evening Post of January 7, 1919, 
printed the following: "When we think of the founding of The 
Atlantic Monthly we think of that marvelous first issue which con- 
tained contributions from Longfellow, Motley, Emerson, Lowell, 
Charles Eliot Norton, Holmes, Whittier, Mrs. Stowe, Trowbridge, 
and Parke Godwin. We do not start magazines nowadays with such 
poetic contributions as Longfellow's poem on *The Lady with the 
Lamp,' Whittier's 'Tritemius,' Emerson's 'Days' and 'Brahma,' 
Lowell's *The Maple,' and such prose as 'The Autocrat of the Break- 
fast Table' and Emerson's essay on 'Illusions,' all in the first num- 
ber. Holmes began with the words, as every reader of 'The Auto- 
crat' knows, *I was just going to say, when I was interrupted — .' 
It has often been recalled that a score of years before he had been 
interrupted in somewhat similar essay-chat by the failure of the 
magazine which accepted his writings. But what a familiar, pleasant 
way of beginning a serial in a brand-new magazine! And what a 
pleasantly clubby atmosphere was imparted by having several 
authors represented by a number of contributions — Emerson by 
no less than five!" 

[47] 



A GOLDEN AGE OF AUTHORS 

CO very of Jerusalem." The Editor's Drawer then as 
now was wide open, but its cheerful items began 
usually with those somnolent phrases, "We are in- 
debted to one of the leading for the following," 

or "We have from a Georgia correspondent," or 
"Another from the same source." In our day jokes 
are born we know not where, but in the sixties and 
seventies somebody was responsible for each of 
them. 

Mr. Alden, editor of Harper's, wrote of the 
friendly competition which soon developed be- 
tween his magazine and Scribner's, "If you are 
driving a spirited horse and another mettlesome 
steed comes alongside, your horse naturally leaps 
forward, rejoicing in a good race." 

Scribner's from the first number printed the au- 
thor's name in the monthly table of contents (not 
with the contribution), and at its beginning some of 
the magazines were doing the same, but they had 
not always done so — the individuality of authors 
had not been regarded in the past as a very impor- 
tant matter. The earlier magazines printed no au- 
thors' names at all; later a nom de plume was in 
fashion, " Waverley," "Boz," "Elia," the easiest to 
recall. Sometimes the names appeared in an index 
at the end of the volume; not always, for editors 
wanted you to like their magazine — never mind 

[48] 



CHARLES DUDLEY WARNER 

who wrote it, sometimes they wrote it all them- 
selves. James Russell Lowell, when an editor, in 
1859, said, " I have always been opposed to the pub- 
lication of authors' names at all." Looking back one 
can see that the publication of authors' names must 
be an incentive to better writing, a fair stimulus to 
an honorable ambition. And yet there was plenty 
of good writing in the days when individuality was 
no more considered in magazines than it is to-day 
in the newspapers. 

In the second year of Scribner's Monthly came 
Charles Dudley Warner's "Backlog Studies," which, 
if *' Ik Marvel " had not written " Reveries of a 
Bachelor," might be read now. I was a boy in 
Hartford when Warner's "My Summer in a Gar- 
den" appeared as occasional articles in the Hartford 
Courant, of which he was one of the editors (per- 
haps they were printed regularly — was it not 
Monday morning, when news was apt to be scarce, 
that they were run in?). Hartford was amused over 
these gardening episodes, where the author fought 
"pusley" as if it were original sin, but Hartford 
had no idea that it was reading literature. The 
public of to-day knows Warner best from his 
"Library," a collection of prose and verse of which 
he was editor-in-chief, and yet Warner wrote much 
that was good and should be enduring — "Saun- 

[49] 



A GOLDEN AGE OF AUTHORS 

terings," "My Winter on the Nile," "The Golden 
House," and his studies of America — "journalis- 
tic," the critics call them. His part in "The Gilded 
Age " did not equal Mark Twain's — the play, 
" Colonel Sellers," was made up from Mark Twain's 
chapters. 

Saxe Holm's first story, "Esther Wynn's Love- 
Letters," and Frank R. Stockton's first Scribner 
story, "Stephen Skarridge's Christmas," were in 
this second year of the new Scribner, and there 
was a Lancashire story, "Surly Tim's Trouble," 
by Fanny E. Hodgson, who was later to become 
Frances Hodgson Burnett, and under that name 
to do much good writing — and seldom a bad villain 
in her books, for Mrs. Burnett's personal belief in 
happiness has tempered all her literary work. 

It was in November, 1873, that Scribner's began 
its first important series of papers, "The Great 
South," by Edward King, who made a trip through 
the Southern States in the interests of the magazine, 
accompanied by J. Wells Champney, artist. The 
end of the Civil War was not ten years away, and 
in these papers the North was made acquainted 
with the vast resources of the South, and the South 
was pleased and flattered by the attention. The 
result was most helpful in creating good feeling 

[ 50 1 



GEORGE W. CABLE 

between the sections, and this feeling was further 
increased by the War series fifteen years later. 

A by-product of King's trip, of more importance 
to the world than "The Great South," was his dis- 
covery of George W. Cable, the first American to 
use his own surroundings for a background in what 
was real literature. Bret Harte was a pioneer and 
should have the credit of a pioneer, but George W. 
Cable was a great literary artist. He had been a 
clerk in the New Orleans custom-house, and at 
seventeen a private in the Confederate army; later 
an imsuccessful newspaper man. When King reached 
New Orleans, Cable was working by day in a cot- 
ton factor's oflBce, and at night, in his own time, 
beginning to write his marvelous tales of the Creoles 
of Louisiana, and King sent some of Cable's work to 
Dr. Holland. "'Sieur George" appeared in October, 
1873, and others came within the next few years, 
"'Tite Poulette," "Jean-ah Poquelin," "Cafe des 
Exiles," and more; revelations of a new world 
peopled with Spanish aristocrats; French of the 
ancien regime, men of stately grace, women as de- 
licious as Dresden china figures touched by a god 
with life. The book containing them came out in 
1879. It must have been just after this that Cable 
journeyed to New York by steamer from New Or- 

I 51 ] 



A GOLDEN AGE OF AUTHORS 

leans, and I met him as he landed, a foreign-looking, 
slight man, delighted with the wonders of the North- 
ern metropolis. We rode in the "Elevated" — it 
was quite new then — and Cable sat in the last seat 
of the last car, looking out on track and buildings 
with all the delight of a boy. In November, 1879, 
Scribner's Monthly began the publication of Cable's 
first novel, "The Grandissimes." He was one of 
the greatest "finds" of the new magazine. 

I am not writing a history of American literature, 
simply endeavoring to record my personal impres- 
sions. It is a temptation to go through the old vol- 
umes of the magazines of that day, but I refrain, for 
I did not know personally many of the writers. One 
I knew, William Dean Howells, who still lives and 
writes as these pages are written. Some of his most 
popular novels, including "A Modern Instance," 
"A Woman's Reason," and "The Rise of Silas 
Lapham," the latter his best-selling book to-day, 
were published serially in Scribner's Monthly and 
The Century; but in 1886 he made a contract to 
write for another magazine. He sent me recently 
a letter which he had found in his files — it was 
from Roswell Smith, written to Howells when he 
left us, a fine letter, full of appreciation for what 
he had done for our magazine and bidding him god- 

[ 52 ] 



WILLIAM DEAN HOWELLS 

speed in his new relation. It was a great satisfaction 
to the conductors of The Century to have this splen- 
did writer, dean to-day of American letters, come 
back into their fold with "The Leatherwood God" 
in 1916. 



CHAPTER IV 

Bret Harte — John Hay — Noah Brooks — Thomas Nelson Page — 
Irwin Russell — Edward Eggleston — Walt Whitman 

One of my first jobs in the oflfice was to dispose of 
a Christmas story which Bret Harte had sent ns 
too late for use in our Christmas niunber, but as 
he had abeady arranged for its pubhcation in the 
Christmas issue of an Enghsh magazine it had to 
be printed in this country at once. I took it to Mr. 
Charles Anderson Dana, of the New York Sun, the 
only time I ever saw Mr. Dana, and I got a most 
delightful impression of him from the interview. 
Yes, he would take the story at one hundred and 
fifty dollars if the money could go to Mrs. Harte, 
whom Bret Harte had left in America. It was so 
arranged, by cable with the author, and the Sunday 
Sun printed the story, paying Mrs. Harte. 

It was ten years before this, in 1868, that Bret 
Harte's "The Luck of Roaring Camp" had ap- 
peared in The Overland Monthly, and the pub- 
lishers of The Atlantic had at once asked Harte 
for a contribution, later making him an offer of 
$10,000 a year to write exclusively for them. For 
"The Luck of Roaring Camp" — that remarka- 

[54 ] 



BRET HARTE 

ble Dickens-like story of a baby born in one of the 
roughest and most maseuHne of mining quarters — 
marked a new era in the history of American Hter- 
ature. Poe had written short stories, great ones too, 
but he might have been French ar Russian. The 
new California Dickens was a man who knew the 
world about which he was writing, knew his char- 
acters, had lived with them. And Andrew Lang said 
of him: "Of all the pupils of Dickens he is perhaps 
the only one who has continued to be himself, who 
has not fallen into the trick of aping his master's 
mannerisms. ... He is almost the only American 
humorist with sentiment." 

Harte and Noah Brooks, when The Overland was 
starting, had agreed to write a story for The Over- 
land's first number. Brooks was the only one to 
have his contribution ready in time, although there 
had been four months in which to prepare. Harte 
had written a poem, and while Brooks's story has 
been forgotten we still remember 

"Serene, indifferent of Fate, 
Thou sittest at the Western Gate,'* — 

Bret Harte's tribute to San Francisco. 

It was in the second munber of The Overland, 
August, 1868, that "The Luck of Roaring Camp" 
appeared. Shall we ever forget the embarrassed 

[ 55 ] 



A GOLDEN AGE OF AUTHORS 

Kentuck looking at his finger — "he wrastled with 
my finger, the damned Httle cuss"? Sentimental, 
yes, but there was poetry in it. Professor Beers has 
written: "There was a time when Irving seemed 
sentimental and Cooper dramatic, yet they survive. " 
When Harte accepted The Atlantic's offer and 
went to live in the East, he gave that magazine for 
its $10,000 four short stories and five poems — none 
of the latter containing the faintest suggestion of 
the taking quality of "The Heathen Chinee" which 
had swept the country from coast to coast: 

"Which I wish to remark — 
And my language is plain — 
That for ways that are dark 

And for tricks that are vain, 
The heathen Chinee is peculiar : 

Which the same I would rise to explain." 

Many of the phrases of "The Heathen Chinee" 
passed into the slang of the day — and even of 
later days, for I have just read a novel published 
in June, 1918, containing the sentence "and yet his 
musical soul was childlike and bland." "Childlike 
and bland," Harte's characterization of the "Chi- 
nee"! It is easy to know afterwards that a poem 
is "taking," yet Stedman wrote to Howells about 
this one soon after publication, "I don't beheve that 
either you or I would have printed 'The Heathen 

156] 



BRET HARTE 

Chinee/ coming from an unknown author; it is so 
very different from the pohshed level of Miss [Helen] 
Hunt, Mrs. Thaxter, etc. Yet it would have been a 
good thing to print." 

In spite of the fact that Dr. Holland did not 
quite approve of "Truthful James" and some other 
of Bret Harte's creations, the conductors of Scrib- 
ner's persuaded Harte to write a novel for them, and 
with a great flourish of the publishers' trumpets, 
"Gabriel Conroy," its author's first novel, began 
its serial course in November, 1875. Dr. Holland 
balanced it with his own novel, "The Story of 
Sevenoaks," and indeed the latter was the better 
of the two, for in spite of the wealth of material 
in "Gabriel Conroy" Bret Harte failed to make a 
convincing story of it. "Gabriel Conroy" has been 
called "at the same time the best and the worst 
American novel of the century." Professor Pattee, 
in his "History of American Literature since 1870," 
truly says that the kind of story that Bret Harte 
could write must be brief. "He who depicts the one 
good deed in a wicked life must of necessity use a 
small canvas. At one moment in his career Jack 
Hamlin or Mother Shipton or Sandy does a truly 
heroic deed, but the author must not extend his 
inquiries too far. To make a novel with Mother 
Shipton as heroine would be intolerable." 

[57] 



A GOLDEN AGE OF AUTHORS 

Here is a letter to Roswell Smith from Harte. It 
is undated except for ** Sunday Night, 7.30": 

My dear Mr. Smith: 

I've been working at the Christmas story since I sent 
you that hne Saturday, and have written and rewritten 
over 80 pp., of which all I have to show now is what I 
leave for you. It closes the second episode. There will 
be about ten pages of MS. more to complete, which I 
shall send you from Chicago, Tuesday night. I shall try 
to write at it in the cars, but at any event I have a clear 
day in Chicago to give it. 

It has given me a vast deal of trouble, and I have 
written enough MS. to make four stories of the size. 
It is something that could not be hastily done, as the 
effect depended more on the treatment than the dra- 
matic incident. 

Now, if you are a man as well as a publisher, you will 
send your cheque for $250 to my sister, payable to her 
order, to receive it on the following morning, early. 

I have told my sister that you would send her the 
cheque. ... I know you will send it and have faith in 

Yours 

Bret Harte 

The letter bears no endorsement, but I imagine 
the check was sent. 

Bret Harte's literary partner in the early num- 
bers of The Overland, Noah Brooks, was one of the 
group which included Charles Warren Stoddard and 
Mark Twain. Brooks spent the last years of his 
life in New York and was much in our oflSce. He had 

[58] 



NOAH BROOKS AND JOHN HAY 

been sponsor for Will Carey and got him his place 
there — I found recently a letter from Noah Brooks 
to Roswell Smith, telling of an "upright, honest, 
steady lad" for whom he wanted to find something 
to do, preferably in the printer's trade. It was Will 
Carey. Brooks wrote "The Boy Emigrants" and 
other good stories for young people, which came out 
first in St. Nicholas, and he wrote for The Century 
interesting articles on Lincoln whom he had known 
from 1856, and whose secretary he was to be if 
Lincoln's death had not defeated a plan which Lin- 
coln had formed for keeping Brooks near him. 
Probably the faithful Nicolay and Hay were to be 
moved up higher. 

Not only did Dr. Holland disapprove of "Truth- 
ful James," but when John Hay produced his "Pike 
Coimty Ballads," in their strong dialect of theSouth- 
west. Dr. Holland could not bring himself to excuse 
their "Universalism," as expressed probably in the 
famous last verse of "Jim Bludso": 

"He were n't no saint, but at Jedgment 

I 'd run my chance with Jim 
'Longside of some pious gentlemen 

That would n't shook hands with him. 
He seen his duty — a dead sure thing — 

And went for it thar and then; 
And Christ ain't a-goin' to be too hard 

On a man that died for men." 

[59] 



A GOLDEN AGE OF AUTHORS 

In Thayer's fine Life of John Hay he says that 
the idea of a thought drawn from the heroism of 
Jim and not merely a recital of the act was the sug- 
gestion of Whitelaw Reid, who also in the same way 
was responsible for the last line of " Little Breeches ' ' : 

"And I think that saving a little child, 
And fetching him to his own. 
Is a derned sight better business 
Than loafing around The Throne." 

While not refusing to Jim Bludso his admiration 
and even his "hope," Dr. Holland wrote, "for the 
doctrine that one virtue can compensate for the ab- 
sence of another — that bigamy can be condoned by 
bravery, or infidelity to one's wife be atoned for by 
fidelity to one's business — we have only horror 
and disgust." 

Dr. Holland took Jim Bludso very seriously. 

As for dialect Scribner's Monthly had plenty of 
it, and at that time negro dialect was perhaps more 
welcome than that of the Pike, but later it was felt 
that the public was tiring of negro dialect, and 
Thomas Nelson Page suffered thereby. His "Marse 
Chan" was allowed to stand unprinted for four 
years. It was in such pronounced negro dialect that 
many words had been changed almost beyond rec- 
ognition, and the editors were rather afraid of it. 
It finally appeared in 1884, and was one of the maga- 

[60] 



THOMAS NELSON PAGE 

zine's most talked-of short stories. Undoubtedly the 
delay kept Page back in his writing, but he never 
laid it up against the editors. 

I remember when Page came to New York on his 
wedding tour, a young Richmond lawyer. It must 
have been soon after the appearance of "Marse 
Chan." 

It was in the late seventies that the young genius 
Irwin Russell was being appreciated and encouraged 
by the magazine editors. His "Christmas Night 
in the Quarters" is unsurpassed. Russell died in 
1879 at twenty-six years of age of yellow fever, 
which is the epidemic referred to in the following 
letter. Thank God, that great cause of suffering and 
death in the South has been removed by the healing 
touch of modern science. It is a discouraged letter, 
written the year before his death: 

Office of 

Irwin Russell 

Attorney 

Port Gibson, Miss., Sept. 28, 1878 
Editor Scribner's Monthly, 
New York. 
Dear Sir: — You are very kind to consult me about 
using what is altogether your own. I shall feel compli- 
mented by your including anything of mine in your pur- 
posed volume. 

My own projected book is abandoned. The epidemic, 
besides taking away my best friends, has utterly ruined 

[61] 



A GOLDEN AGE OF AUTHORS 

my business, and I am forced to seek employment — 
hoping to find a "sit" somewhere as a printer. 
Very respectfully 

Irwin Russell 

I saw a great deal of Dr. Edward Eggleston in 
my early years in the magazine oflSce. His "Hoosier 
Schoolmaster" had come out in 1871, and from that 
time until the appearance of his last novel, "The 
Faith Doctor," just twenty years later, he was one 
of the busiest of writers and editors. The trial 
scene in his novel "The Graysons," with Abraham 
Lincoln one of the lawyers — the famous Jack 
Armstrong case — is a fine example of good imagi- 
native writing based on history. 

A number of letters from Dr. Eggleston are in 
my files: 

Please always compliment me by calling me by my 
name, pure and simple. When "Rev." is at one end of 
a man's name and "D.D." at the other, it seems as 
though the name needed a bladder to float it. 

I leave the matter of pay to you. I wanted to get back 
into the magazine again and to show my appreciation 
of the manner in which you have all treated me. And I 
wanted most of all to preach the sermon which I trust 
this story will preach to many if you like it well enough 
to publish it. 

Once he was offended by a poor portrait of him- 
self which appeared in the advertising pages, and 

f 62 1 



EDWARD EGGLESTON 

he told me very plainly what he thought about it. 
He was sorry later and wrote: 

If my earnestness about that picture annoyed you, I 
sincerely beg your pardon. I had been stirred up by crit- 
icism of it. It is really of no consequence and I am 
ashamed to have shown so much worry over it. I think 
too much of you to want to make you uncomfortable 
in a matter in which you did as well as you could with 
your material. . . . To humbly beg your pardon, my 
good friend, is all that I can do. 

Sincerely yours 

Edward Eggleston 

It was a happy life we lived. If any one hurt an- 
other's feelings he was always so sorry that we 
were better friends than ever when the trouble was 
over. 

It was in August, 1883, that John Hay's "The 
Bread- Winners " began its brilliant serial course, 
and for more than twenty-five years the secret of 
its authorship was well kept. I think only Gilder 
of the office staff knew at the time who wrote it. It 
is the story of a struggle between Labor and Capital, 
with plenty of love and with characters who seem 
very real people, but the author is on the side of 
Capital, although perfectly fair to Labor, and he 
doubtless felt that to have it known that he was the 
author would be a business injury. In fact Hay 
stated at the time that his standing would be seri- 

[ 63 1 



A GOLDEN AGE OF AUTHORS 

ously compromised if it were known that he had 
written a novel at all. 

The secret of another anonymous serial has been 
even better kept. I may have my suspicions, but I 
do not know certainly to this day who wrote '*The 
Confessions of a Wife." All dealings with the author 
were through a lawyer. 

It was on the anniversary of Lincoln's death in 
1889 that Walt Whitman came to New York and 
read his lecture on Lincoln at the Madison Square 
Theater, before one of the most distinguished audi- 
ences ever gathered to honor a literary man — James 
Russell Lowell, John Hay, Mark Twain, Stockton, 
Bunner, Saint-Gaudens, Dr. Eggleston, John Bur- 
roughs, Stedman, Gilder, and many more. Mr. 
Carnegie sent a check for $350 to pay for his box — 
all the proceeds went to Whitman; he had come into 
his own at last. In looks the good, gray poet was 
rarely satisfying, a noble head covered with flowing 
gray hair and with a beard that was a part of it, his 
face of a healthy hue, on his well-shaped body a 
loosely fitting gray suit, the vest well opened, white 
cuffs turned back over his coat-sleeves, and a broad 
white turnover collar. One felt that he was of any 
age — that his counterpart, clad in a long robe, 
might have been an Old Testament prophet. 

[ 64 ] 



WALT WHITMAN 

As he was lame he sat in a big armchair through 
the lecture, which while somewhat disjointed was 
tenderly, beautifully delivered, with frequent stops 
for illustrative interpolations. There was a sugges- 
tion of Lincoln himseK in the speaker, a certain 
calm, removed air as of one who lived in great 
spaces and who thought on noble things. At the end 
he read "O Captain! My Captain!" and we all 
wept together. 



CHAPTER V 

The Gudgeon Club — Frank H. Scott — Charles F. Chichester — 
Alexander TV, Drake — Timothy Cole — George Inness and 
Inness, Jr. — Joseph Jefferson — F. Hopkinson Smith 

If any one wants to get a good deal for nothing I 
commend the plan of the " Gudgeon Club," which 
was started by some of the choice spirits in our office 
during the eighties. I cannot remember whose idea 
it was, but I suspect Buel, who had a brain that 
often produced that which was striking and original. 
Four of us were dining together, happily and on 
some special occasion, when a member of the party 
suggested that we should continue the dinner yearly. 
Then came the great idea: it was that we should 
take in a new member annually, and then, all the 
present party having given their yearly dinners, he 
should be allowed to pay for the next one and that 
his expenditure could be absolutely unlimited; and 
with a new member every year we had perpetual 
motion. It was a great success — for a time. The 
spirit of emulation seized upon the new members in 
a very gratifying way; we had wonderful dinners, 
sometimes going in parlor cars (there were no auto- 
mobiles in those days) to far-away points where 
there were famous restaurants, and spending the 

166] 



THE GUDGEON CLUB 

night. Entertainments of all kinds were provided. 
Each man strove to outdo his predecessor and to 
make his feast more Lucullan than the one before. 
The founders, with no dues to pay and no checks 
to sign, had a happy time. 

Of course the club went to pieces of its own 
weight in course of years. A dinner for six or eight 
was one thing, but the best dinner that a crowd of 
a dozen or fifteen had ever sat down to was another. 
It became increasingly difficult to elect new mem- 
bers, and the new member's name, *'the gudgeon," ^ 
became more and more significant. 

Of the men in the office when I joined it, next to 
Roswell Smith was Frank Hall Scott, gentle, con- 
servative, who became Mr. Smith's successor as 
president and for many years before that was the 
company's treasurer. Charles F. Chichester was the 
advertising manager, and I shall never forget the 
very beautiful circulars which he got out from time 
to time — always printed in black on hand-made 
paper, with a wide margin, an initial in red, the 
text forming a perfect rectangle. Type lines were 
filled out with ornaments — always the type was 
a solid mass. This has become very common since, 

^ Gudgeon. 1. A small European fresh-water fish, allied to the 
carp. It is easily caught and often used for food and for bait. . . . 
3. A person easily duped or cheated. — Webster's Dictionary. 

[67] 



A GOLDEN AGE OF AUTHORS 

but Chichester's circulars were the beginning of a 
new form of type arrangement. He was a lover of 
the beautiful, and soon the company began to have 
the benefit of his taste in the making of its books. 
The little "Thumb Nail Series," its leather covers 
stamped in gold of exquisite design, were Chiches- 
ter's. The perfect type arrangement of the page of 
The Century Dictionary was helped by him. 

On the top floor of the "old oflSce" were the art 
room, and the packing-room. Up the three flights of 
stairs went the best artists and the best wood-en- 
gravers of the day to lay their work before Alexan- 
der W. Drake, who from the beginning until just 
before his death was head of the Art Department. 
Although it was his part to criticize, and to decline 
if he did not like what was offered, yet he had the 
friendship of every artist with whom he had to do. 
His criticisms always were so fair, his suggestions 
so helpful, his praise so quickly given when praise 
was due, that artists were prone to agree with 
him even when they had to bear their canvases 
away. 

No man connected with the art world of New 
York was ever more lovingly honored than was 
Drake by the dinner which ten of the best and most 
interesting clubs gave him on his retirement from 
work. The menu was a pamphlet bearing full-page 

[68] 




ALEXANDER W. DRAKE 

At a Twelfth-Night revel of the Century Club, in the guise of an itinerant Italian fortune-teller 



ALEXANDER W. DRAKE 

reproductions of pictures drawn in Drake's honor 
by John W. Alexander, Reginald Birch, Edwin H. 
Blashfield, Alfred Brennan, F. S. Church, Timothy 
Cole, Kenyon Cox, F. V. DuMond, Charles Dana 
Gibson, Jules Guerin, Jay Hambidge, Oliver Her- 
ford, A. I. Keller, E. W. Kemble, Will H. Low, Max- 
field Parrish, W. A. Rogers, F. Hopkinson Smith, 
Albert Sterner, and Irving R. Wiles; delightful 
pictures they were, — including Gibson's "Hats off 
to Drake ! " — Herford's " My First Visit to Drake," 
the art-editor looking through a magnifying glass 
at the artist's offering on his desk, and the artist 
saying, " ' What! only fifty dollars for a two-horned 
rhinoceros ! ' says I. ' That is my regular price for a 
one-horned rhinoceros! '" Everybody in the art 
world was present at the dinner, for everybody loved 
Drake. 

His taste was phenomenal. His collections of 
brass, of rings, of bird-cages, of glass bottles, of 
models of ships, of furniture, of baskets, of samplers, 
have been sold from time to time and always at 
good prices. He knew where to buy; he was at home 
in the ghetto of many cities; he bought in Spain, in 
Algiers, in Paris, on the East Side of New York; 
the Russian Jew who wanted to part with his sev^n- 
branched candlestick or his samovar could find a 
purchaser in Drake. His gifts to his friends were 

[69] 



A GOLDEN AGE OP AUTHORS 

always unusual, always in exquisite taste, always 
the most interesting of the wedding presents. In his 
magazine work Drake had the benefit of Gilder's 
taste and Gilder's initiative, and, later, William 
Lewis Eraser came to share the burden of art di- 
recting. Mr. Smith was very diplomatic when 
he brought in Eraser to help Drake. There was 
some question as to the exact status of each, and 
Mr. Smith had two signs painted, "A. W. Drake, 
Art Superintendent," and "W. Lewis Eraser, Art 
Manager." That settled it. 

When Scribner's Monthly began, artists drew 
their pictures backward upon the restricted wood 
block, or they were copied on it by draftsmen. Mr. 
Drake developed the process of photographing the 
original picture upon the block, thus permitting the 
originals to be made in any size. Engravers were 
encouraged to do better work, and soon America 
led the world in illustration. In 1880 the London 
Graphic, considered the best of all illustrated papers, 
said, " We know of no English magazine which can 
in any way compete with Scribner's Monthly in the 
matter of illustrations." 

The London Saturday Review wrote at about 
the same time: "The impartial critic who is asked 
where the best wood-cuts are produced, has, we 
fear, but one answer possible — neither in England, 

[70] 



TIMOTHY COLE 

Germany, nor France, but in America." For the 
proof of this "reluctant admission" the Review 
asks "a comparison of any recent number of Scrib- 
ner's Monthly and the Cornhill." The development 
of wood-engraving was a veritable American art 
renaissance. Prizes were offered, young people were 
encouraged to take up the art, and even when photo- 
engraving came in, some wood-engravers, notably 
Timothy Cole, Henry Wolf, Kingsley, Johnson, 
French, Whitney, and Juengling, went on develop- 
ing their art to an extent that the modern world 
had never seen. Kingsley engraved his own pic- 
tures on the wood, drawing them with the graver. 
When the photo-engraving process began to be 
employed, it was Fraser who first used wood- 
engravers on the work of retouching the metal 
plates. 

The greatest of all Centm^y engravers is Timothy 
Cole, and for eighteen years the magazine kept him 
busy in Europe, engraving the masterpieces of art 
— Italian, Flemish, Dutch, French, Spanish, Eng- 
lish. A set of proofs ofXole's engravings of the old 
masters is now of very considerable value and will 
become more valuable as the years go by. Timothy 
Cole can put into an engraving the life which no 
half-tone or any other mechanical process can be- 
stow — the very soul of the picture is there. His 

[ 71 ] 



A GOLDEN AGE OF AUTHORS 

first important introduction to the public came 
through engraving the series of unusual jand some- 
what idealistic portraits of America's great literary 
men, Bryant, Emerson, Longfellow, Whittier, and 
others, the work of Wyatt Eaton, which Scribner's 
Monthly printed. The pictures were cut out and 
framed for many walls, and the line, '* Drawn by 
Wyatt Eaton. Engraved by T. Cole," became famil- 
iar to thousands. 

Cole himself is a simple man, of great kindliness, 
who has had at various times some interesting no- 
tions about food. Years ago, in the days when 
Horace Fletcher was just beginning to publish his 
theories of eating, I made some good-natured fun 
of them (we don't do this any more) and described 
the visit of guests at my house while my family was 
endeavoring to Fletcherize, and the impatience of 
the guests when they did not have enough to eat. 
Some friend sent my screed to Cole, then in Bel- 
gium. He took it very seriously, writing me of his 
great interest in all food .matters and gravely in- 
forming me of a discovery which he had made — no 
other than that the color of the skin was affected 
by food. He was accustomed to eat for a long time 
only one kind of food, and once he went swimming 
with his son, who suddenly cried out, "Why, father, 
you're turning green." "And sure enough," wrote 

[ 72 ] 




TIMOTHY COLE, ENGRAVED ON A WOOD BLOCK BY HIMSELF 

Made many years ago and in the size of a chimney tile. Used in the menu-book of the dinner 

in honor of Alexander W. Drake, February 25, 1913 



TIMOTHY COLE 

Mr. Gole, "I looked down at my body, and observed 
a green tinge. *The spinach/ I said, for I had been 
making my sole diet spinach for six months. ' I must 
change my food!'" Whereupon he ate beets and at 
the end of another six months found his body in a 
healthy, ruddy state, which he felt was largely due 
to the beets. 

To-day Cole and his wife are living in quiet re- 
tirement on the outskirts of Poughkeepsie, over- 
looking the Hudson, in a two-roomed bungalow 
which they built to suit themselves. It has a large 
piazza enclosed in winter, and a cellar that would 
take a prize in Spotless Town. Here in the smaller 
of the two rooms, his studio, with a north light 
illuminating a small stand on which is a fixed mag- 
nifying glass, Timothy Cole does his work, engrav- 
ing what he pleases, a bookplate for a friend, a 
bas-relief in wood, Sargent's portrait of President 
Wilson, a lovely wood-scene by Francis Murphy. 
Nor does his hand tremble — he has never smoked 
or used spirits, and his food is the simplest — nor is 
any of his marvelous natural force abated. He is 
a true artist, a great genius; the world has built 
monuments in memory of lesser men. 

For the Drake dinner, just referred to. Cole con- 
tributed a wood-engraved portrait of himself and 
this sonnet: 

[73] 



A GOLDEN AGE OF AUTHORS 

"While busy with my burin, plying still 

A dying craft, — alas! how few are left! — 

I oft compare the present days, bereft 

Of youth's fine ardor and of art's just thrill. 

With days now passed to dreamland, when the will 
And power of Drake — like his who conquered Spain's 
Armada — triumphed over lesser brains 
And raised a school of far more splendid skill. 

Drake's magic wand called choicest spirits forth — 
JuengHng and Kingsley, Wolf, French, Whitney, King. 
New life awoke, though critics all were wroth; 

Fine art prevailed and made its votaries sing. 
Yet value not those days as more than these : 
While Co(a)le gives warmth our Drake can never freeze!" 

While on the subject of engraving, I may add 
that sometimes I have thought that it would be 
better never to try to illustrate a story in book or 
magazine, — the reader often can imagine more 
satisfactory people than most artists can draw, — 
and that the illustrations in the magazines should 
be confined to reproductions of pictures worth while 
in themselves, original or not — insets perhaps and 
not a necessary part of the magazine text. But we 
could not spare such illustrations as Howard Pyle's 
for "Hugh Wynne" or his own "Men of Iron," or 
Du Manner's for "Trilby," or anything that Max- 
field Parrish illuminates with his brush. Amusing 
pictures like May Wilson Preston's or Peter New- 
ell's or Gruger's or Henry Raleigh's often add to 

[74] 



GEORGE INNESS 

our pleasure in reading light stories — nevertheless, I 
think that the average story is better unillustrated. 
When I was a boy I knew of writers for the week- 
lies and monthlies of that day, Gleason's Literary 
Companion, Godey's Lady's Book, etc., whose edi- 
tors used to send them a batch of proofs of English 
and other foreign pictures, bought cheap, that they 
might get ideas for their stories from the pictures, 
which later would be used to illustrate the stories 
— and be sure to fit. 

It was in the early eighties that George Inness 
was invited by the Boston Art Club to make an ex- 
hibition of such of his works as he could gather to- 
gether in the galleries of the club — the first time, 
1 think, that Mr. Inness's paintings were shown 
en masse to the public. Roswell Smith, whose only 
daughter had a few years before married Inness's 
only son, and who was most appreciative of the 
genius of his new connection, was desirous of hav- 
ing this exhibition a great success. He suggested 
that George, Jr., and I should go to Boston for a 
fortnight in advance and help it along. "You, Wil- 
liam," he said to me, "know the pubHc and ways of 
reaching them, and George knows the artists in 
Boston. Go ahead and help to make that exhibition 
appreciated." 

[75] 



A GOLDEN AGE OF AUTHORS 

George and I went to Boston, where, being much 
entertained by newspaper men and others, it 
seemed to us that nearly every man in the city 
spent the greater part of the afternoon at Young's, 
beginning with oysters at one o'clock and conclud- 
ing with coffee between three and four. Evenings 
too were given largely to the consumption of food. 
When the Saturday night of the reception came 
"everybody" in Boston was at the Art Club, and 
many had come from far away, including a few 
notable critics from New York. The exhibition was 
a distinct success, and in that gallery it first dawned 
upon the public that the poet-painter Inness was 
the greatest master of his art that America had 
seen. From that day his pictures, which had sel- 
dom brought him in $1000, began to realize higher 
prices, from which, fortunately, he was able to 
benefit in his lifetime. Since his death as much as 
$45,000 has been paid for a fine Inness — and it is 
not likely that the limit has been reached. 

Mr. Inness went to Boston after the rooms 
opened, and I was fortunate enough to be with him 
one afternoon when he made a call on his friend and 
contemporary, George Fuller. Each man greatly 
admired the work of the other. In the course of 
their talk Mr. Inness painted in mid-air with his 
thumb a pictiu'e which had just come into his mind. 

[76] 



GEORGE INNESS, JR. 

I can see him now, quickly taking off his overcoat, 
crouching a Httle, then drawing a long, straight 
horizon line — a group of trees here on the left 
(he sketched in the trees) — over at the right, on 
the horizon, a distant railway train. Then (one eye 
shut and his nose twisted) a vertical column of 
black smoke rising straight against a gray cloud. 
The picture was there before us, and might almost 
have been taken away and framed. He did paint it, 
and I think he used the idea several times, but I 
am confident that Mr. Fuller and I were the first 
to see it. 

A few years later George, Jr., and I went to Eu- 
rope together. He had been born and bred there, but 
I was a young American seeing the Old World for 
the first time. He made a splendid companion, full 
of reminiscences and good talk, but he could not 
endure my acting as if I had never seen it all be- 
fore. If I stopped and gazed, he began to shy; if 
I followed this by taking a red guide-book out of 
my pocket, he fled. 

Places did not interest him in the same way they 
interested me. On the steamer going over he said: 
"Let's surely go to Perugia." 

"Of course," I answered, "and to Assisi, close 
by, where St. Francis — " 

"Never mind about St. Francis. There is a cafe 
[77] 



A GOLDEN AGE OF AUTHORS 

in Perugia where they have the very best coffee in 
all Europe." 

And they had — and it was twenty-five years 
later before I got to Assisi. 

At Rome we enjoyed the artists, Caryl Coleman, 
Elihu Vedder, and their fellow-workers. We ate at 
queer "trattorias" and drank chianti, and every 
night were characters in "La Boheme." Vedder was 
working on his illustrations for the "Rubaiyat," 
and as I was much in his studio and he full of the 
subject, the beauty and power of Fitzgerald's ren- 
dering of Omar's lines took deep hold on me. 

George spoke Italian well, and that greatly 
added to our comfort — though in one case it de- 
tracted from mine. As we were leaving Pompeii, 
the guides, who were not allowed to receive fees, 
made a dead set at George, the converser, inviting 
him into their house to see the pictures which they 
could sell. "Ah, no," he whispered in Italian (as I 
learned afterward), with much lifting of his eye- 
brows and many shrugs, "I am but a poor artist. 
Here, now, — with me is a very wealthy signor, a 
most generous and noble man. Invite him." 

George hurried on, leaving me defenseless, and 
a horde of guides pressed me into the house. 

"An album, signor — ev-very picture of Pom- 
peii — only one thousand lire." 

[78] 



GEORGE INNESS, JR. 

"No? This one, then — see — five hundred Hre. 
Ah, beau-ti-ful — it will leeve forever." 

I tried to run, but first the signor should see them 
all — two hundred, one hundred lire. Finally 1 got 
away, spending a few lire and losing two buttons off 
my coat. 

When we reached Germany on the way home, 
my companion said: 

"Now, Will, you can do the talking." 

I knew very little German, but I tried some of it 
on the first man I met, the porter who carried our 
bags upstairs. 

"Um wie viel uhr table d'hote.^'* 

"Half -past foive, sorr." 

One can get on very well in Europe with a mere 
smattering of foreign languages — and English. 

The best friend I ever had in the acting profession 
was Joseph Jefferson, whose "Autobiography" was 
one of two famous books produced at about the 
same time, both of them needing no editorial revi- 
sion. The other was Grant's "Memoirs." Gilder 
knew that Jefferson was writing the story of his life, 
and he tried for years to get it. Twice I made a jour- 
ney to "Jefferson Island," his Louisiana plantation, 
with the same object, but it was hard to convince 
Jefferson that The Century was the proper place to 

[79] 



A GOLDEN AGE OF AUTHORS 

print his story. He had an idea that he wanted it 
first pubHshed as a subscription book, with a nice 
leather back and a gilt top, and men going around 
to talk about it. I remember his blowing the dust 
off an imaginary gilt top when he spoke of this to 
me one day. 

To reach " Jeflferson Island" one traveled by rail 
for four hours southwest from New Orleans, and 
then drove for ten miles over a flat prairie. " Avery's 
Island," a tall mesa with a famous salt mine inside 
it, loomed up in the distance. And here at ''Avery's 
Island," Mr. McUhenny, of the Avery family, put 
up his famous "Tabasco Sauce" beloved by gour- 
mands the world around. Mr. Jefferson called his 
place ''Orange Island," but every one else called it 
after him. It was an island in name only, although 
one crossed a bridge over a small stream to reach it. 
The house was a great hospitable Southern home, 
one-story, with verandas on three sides. I have 
never forgotten the pleasant custom of having a 
colored man bring black coffee before we were 
up. 

Those were great days on the veranda at Jeffer- 
son's plantation. He would read aloud from the 
manuscript, lean back, put his spectacles up on his 
forehead, and tell a story, and I would say, "Why 
don't you put that in?" 

180] 




JOSEPH JEFFERSON AND fliS YOUNGEST BOY 

From a photograph made by W. W. Ellsworth at Mr. Jefferson's home in 

Louisiana in 1889 



JOSEPH JEFFERSON 

"No — you don't think they would like that, do 
you?" 

I did, and in it would go. 

In my file there is a letter from JeflFerson to Ros- 
well Smith about the "Autobiography," written 
from Hohokus, New Jersey, May 16, 1888. After 
expressing his gratification that the office, and 
especially Gilder, liked the book and considered it 
magazineable, he continued: 

I did not write my Autobiography with a view to se- 
rial publication. It is somewhat dramatic in its form and 
my theatrical experience has taught me that long waits 
between the acts weaken the interest, and I have ex- 
pressed to Mr. Gilder my fears as to this result in the 
case of my book. 

He does not agree with me on this point, and as I 
have faith in his judgment, I am willing to waive the 
consideration, if we can reconcile one or two other mat- 
ters that now stand in the way, to our mutual satisfac^ 
tion. 

In the first place, I do not desire that my book shall 
be brought out till the International Copyright law, 
now so near its enactment, shall have passed, otherwise 
I should lose the benefit of the English and Australian 
markets. The terms you offer as I remember, $10,000, 
while I do not reflect on their liberality, are however 
lower than I could entertain. I should consider $20,000 
the least I would accept for the serial publication you 
speak of. 

It is quite likely that my work is not worth this to 
the magazine, but I have to consider that as everybody 

[81] 



A GOLDEN AGE OF AUTHORS 

reads The Century, the novelty and freshness of my 
work would be weakened for future publication. 

I fully appreciate the value of an endorsement such as 
your magazine would give, but after that I could not 
hope to rekindle any enthusiasm by the re-publication 
of it. Should you desire to entertain the sum I have 
named as the price, I will be most pleased to meet and 
arrange with you for the publication. 

Thanking you for your pleasant note and your con- 
sideration, I am 

Faithfully yours 

J. Jefferson 

Mr. Jefferson's fears were removed as to there be- 
ing no sale for a serial when issued in book form; 
there was a compromise in the price, and he was 
never sorry that he let the '* Autobiography" ap- 
pear first in a literary magazine, for it gave him a 
literary clientele and brought him a college degree 
and much appreciation. 

He was asked frequently to speak in colleges, 
and he loved to do it. My eldest daughter was at 
Smith College when Jefferson was playing for a 
night at Springfield, Massachusetts, near by. He 
telegraphed her saying that he would be glad to 
speak to the girls of Smith at twelve o'clock the 
next noon. The telegram was taken to President 
Seelye in some trepidation — to suggest a college 
speaker seemed a serious matter to the student. 
But the President said, "Why, surely, telegraph 

[ 82] 



JOSEPH JEFFERSON 

him at once to come." And he came. The chapel 
was packed to the window-sills, and Mr. Jefferson 
had his usual good time, talking and giving un- 
bounded pleasure to a thousand girls. After the 
generous applause which was sure to greet him, he 
would begin with "An actor who makes speeches 
certainly likes applause, and for two reasons; first, 
because he enjoys appreciation, and, second, be- 
cause it gives him a chance to think what he is 
going to say next." Then there would be more 
applause, and he would go happily on. 

He was particularly clever at answering ques- 
tions, and when he was to make a speech and feared 
that he would run out of ideas, he would ask to have 
some questions distributed among the people near. 
This was done at a dinner we gave him at the Aldine 
Club, but he had not counted on the ideas which 
would come to him from the introducer. Hamilton 
W. Mabie was in the chair, and Mabie always took 
pains to know something about the man he intro- 
duced, and frequently he gave the speaker a better 
idea for a speech than the one he had in his head. 
Thanks to Mabie, Aldine after-dinner speeches 
were always good. 

That night Mabie had prepared himself by read- 
ing Winter's book on the Jefferson family — four 
generations of them had been actors, and at The 

[83] 



A GOLDEN AGE OF AUTHORS 

Players there hangs a faded playbill of Drury Lane, 
with Jefferson's grandfather cast as the ghost to 
David Garriek's Hamlet — and Mabie's introduc- 
tory speech was of the older Jeff er sons and Mrs. 
Siddons. On that subject our guest knew more than 
Mabie — as Mabie was well aware — and he talked 
for an hour, talked as I had never heard him talk 
before, of his father, his grandfather, with family 
legends of David Garrick, Kemble, Charlotte Cush- 
man — it was one of the events of our lives. No 
questions were needed that night. 

Jefferson generally ended his spring season with 
a Saturday night in Yonkers, and once he spent a 
Sunday there with me. "I want you to come to 
Niblo's Garden to-morrow afternoon," he said, 
"and bring the whole family. I have hired the 
theater, kept my company together, and we are 
going to play 'Rip Van Winkle' for the blind and 
deaf children in the New York City institutions. 
It will be a great occasion to me, for I have always 
wanted to try my acting on the blind and the deaf, 
to see whether the deaf would get enough from what 
they saw and the blind from what they heard." So 
we went to Niblo's Garden Monday afternoon. En- 
tering by the stage door we were shown into one of 
the boxes; the others were occupied by the Cleve- 
lands, the Gilders, and Mrs. Jefferson; the house 

[84 ] 



JOSEPH JEFFERSON 

was rather dark, but looking around we could see 
that it was packed with boys and girls: blue uni- 
forms here, white collars over there. Presently there 
came a note from Mr. Jefferson: "The experiment 
is a failure; the Charity Commissioners thought 
I must have made a mistake in inviting the blind 
and the deaf, and they have sent an audience with- 
out a thing the matter with them." And it was not 
a very appreciative audience either; charity chil- 
dren are usually afraid to show their pleasure. 

Mr. Jefferson believed that if he had not been an 
actor, he would have been a painter, and, perhaps, 
"would have succeeded better." He loved to depict 
Southern scenes — the slumbering bayou, or the 
deep forest with its great tree-trunks and drooping 
moss. He was one of the few to make "mono- 
types" — sketches done in sepia and lard on a zinc 
plate, from which a single impression is printed 
on absorbent paper. I have a "monotype" of his, 
about twenty-four by sixteen inches in size, repre- 
senting the ruins of a sugar-mill, which Mr. Jeffer- 
son painted in twenty minutes. He gave me, too, 
a painted tapestry -like hanging, the work of his 
brush, about eight feet high by five feet wide, de- 
picting a red flamingo under a green-leaved pal- 
metto. 

The last letter I ever had from Mr. Jefferson was 
I 85 ] 



A GOLDEN AGE OF AUTHORS 

written from Palm Beach, Florida, December 11, 
1903. He died there April 23, 1905. It was largely 
about business matters, but it closed with this: 

Give my cordial regards to your dear family all of 
whom I so well remember. It only seems the other day 
that I enjoyed your hospitality. I fancy by this time 
that those little ones are all grown-ups and that you are 
several grandfathers. How time goes on, so heedless of 
us all. What a short-lived creature is man (myself ex- 
cepted, by-the-by, 75 next birthday) ! In a few years 
we shall be sweet little angels, wings and all, and as the 
old gambler said on his death bed, "If we meet I'll fly 
you for $5." Till then. 

Sincerely yours J. Jefferson 

Gilder encouraged a number of authors besides 
Jefferson, and one, Hopkinson Smith, he actually 
started on his career. Smith was a great story- 
teller, and Gilder asked him to make a record of his 
stories for The Century, with the result that Hop- 
kinson Smith produced '' Colonel Carter of Carters- 
ville," planning it simply as a vehicle for the colored 
servant Chad to tell his stories, but when it was 
done the stories were subordinate to the charming 
record of the Virginia gentleman, *' Colonel Caarter," 
in New York. 

One day Smith came into my oflSce saying, ''Ells- 
worth, how do you think my stories would go on 
the stage .^ Why should n't I give readings, and how 
do you get started.?" I took him into Major Pond's 

[86] 



CP — ^ — 




LAST PARAGRAPH OF A LETTER FROM JOSEPH JEFFERSON 
WRITTEN AT PALM BEACH, FLORIDA, DECEMBER 11, 1903 



F. HOPKINSON SMITH 

office, next door, in the Everett House, and he was 
soon as great a success at entertaining the pubUc as 
he had been at engineering and writing and paint- 
ing. I think it was as a painter, perhaps, that he 
took the most pleasure. His vacations, for twenty- 
seven consecutive summers, were spent in Venice 
painting — and if a man can go where he wants to 
go and do what he wants to do for three months 
and then sell the product for some thousands of 
dollars, I can't imagine anything much better this 
side of Paradise. 

The world does n't seem quite the same world 
without Hopkinson Smith. No one could be more 
alive. I can see him as he was at a Twelfth Night 
revel of the Century Club. He came as the German 
Emperor — it was years before the war — clad in a 
snow-white uniform, with a brass helmet, and his 
long mustaches having an upward turn. He went 
about with a box of decorations, pinning one on 
nearly every breast. I was decorated because, as he 
said, I had drunk two glasses of beer when one 
would have sufficed. Later in the evening he was 
called upon for a speech, and he delivered one that 
was prophetic: "I am a man of peace," he said; 
*'I vant a piece of Morocco; I vant a piece of China; 
I vant a piece of every country that I have not the 
whole of abetty." 



CHAPTER VI 

St. Nicholas — Mary Mapes Dodge — Rudy ard Kipling— Kate 
Douglas Wiggin — Jack London 

To have been associated in the issuing of St. Nicho- 
las has been one of the pleasures of my life. Roswell 
Smith, who was not long satisfied with publishing 
one magazine, believed there was room for a new 
children's periodical, one which should give more 
and better pictures, with text that children surely 
would like — every bit of it. In Scribner's Monthly 
for July, 1873, — the same number that began 
"The Great South" papers, and contained an in- 
stallment of Dr. Holland's novel, "Arthur Bonni- 
castle," and an illustrated article (which would be 
timely to-day) on "Low Life in Berlin," — there 
was an anonymous article on "Children's Maga- 
zines." It was written by Mary Mapes Dodge, 
who was to be the editor of the new venture. She 
said: "We edit for the approval of fathers and 
mothers, and endeavor to make the child's monthly 
a milk-and-water variety of the adult's periodical. 
But in fact the child's magazine needs to be stronger, 
truer, bolder, more uncompromising than the other. 
Its cheer must be the cheer of the bird-song, not of 

[88] 



MARY MAPES DODGE 

condescending editorial babble. . . . If now and then 
the situation have fun in it, if something tumble 
unexpectedly, if the child-mind is surprised into an 
electric recognition of comical incongruity, so that 
there is a reciprocal 'ha, ha!' between the printed 
page and the little reader, well and good. . . . Let 
there be no sermonizing either, no wearisome spin- 
ning out of facts, no rattling of the dry bones of his- 
tory. . . . Doubtless a great deal of instruction and 
good moral teaching may be inculcated in the pages 
of a magazine; but it must be by hints dropped in- 
cidentally here and there; by a few brisk, hearty 
statements of the difference between right and 
wrong; a sharp, clean thrust at falsehood, a sunny 
recognition of truth, a precious application of 
politeness. The ideal child's magazine is a pleasure- 
ground." 

Later Mrs. Dodge wrote on " Seeing the World," 
in which she suggested that seeing the world meant 
seeing the good there was in it, and not necessarily 
the bad. Her ideas on the subject of children's read- 
ing were always sane and practical, and she had 
the happy faculty of suggesting, creating, obtaining 
the contributions she wanted from just the people 
she wanted to write. She was able to persuade many 
of the great writers of the world to contribute to her 
children's magazine — Tennyson, Longfellow, Bry- 

[89] 



A GOLDEN AGE OF AUTHORS 

ant, Holmes, Bret Harte, John Hay, "Ik Marvel," 
Charles Dudley Warner, Elizabeth Stuart Phelps, 
and scores of others. One day Kipling told her a 
story of the Indian jungle, and Mrs. Dodge asked 
him to write it down for St. Nicholas. He never 
had written for children, but he would try. The 
result was "The Jungle Book." 

I remember Kipling the first time he came into 
our oflSce and as he sat with one leg under him, 
swinging the other, and peering out at us through 
large gold-rimmed spectacles, he seemed like a being 
out of another world — the world of "The Phan- 
tom Ricl^haw" and "The Man Who Would Be 
King." I can't remember ever being really intimi- 
dated by an author except Kipling. 

In the days just before St. Nicholas, there was 
much in the air about the results of bad reading, 
especially dime-novel reading, for boys. James T. 
Fields in his "Biographical Notes" wrote: "I have 
for a long time been of the opinion that the increase 
of crime is largely owing to the reading of immoral 
and exciting cheap books. Traveling about the coun- 
try I see young people everywhere absorbed in read- 
ing, to say the least, a doubtful class of literature. 
On the railroads I see schoolboys secluding them- 
selves from observation, busily occupied in reading 
'Dime Novels' as they are called. If I go into the 

[ 90 1 



YOUNG PEOPLE'S READING 

engine or baggage department, I always find one or 
two workmen oflf duty earnestly devouring the Po- 
lice Gazette or other illustrated journals devoted to 
crime. ... I found the advertisements of low thea- 
ters in all our cities, holding out cheap inducements 

to crowd the pit and gallery when played 'Jack 

Sheppard' and made robbery heroic. 'Escaped from 
Sing Sing' is crowding the Howard Athenaeum, 
based on the easy immunity from the punishment of 
crime." 

Mr. Fields visited a notorious boy criminal under 
sentence of death, and found that dime novels had 
been his chief reading. The boy thought he had 
read at least sixty, most of them stories of kill- 
ing and scalping Indians, and running away with 
women. 

It is worth while to quote this that we may appre- 
ciate how much better are the conditions that sur- 
round young people to-day. Many of them are buy- 
ing The Saturday Evening Post (at haK the price 
of the old dime novel) and other inexpensive but 
usually clean magazines. Instead of going to "low 
theaters," they pay five and ten cents for the 
"movies" and seldom get harm thereby. All this 
has come about within the memory of people not 
very old, and perhaps the influence of St. Nicholas 
on the children of a past generation is making the 

[91 ] 



A GOLDEN AGE OF AUTHORS 

grown-ups of the present day a little more thought- 
ful of what they place before the children of their 
own time. 

Here in this bottomless pile of old letters, which 
I have been saving for years, is one from Frank 
Stockton to Roswell Smith written June 6, 1873. 
The first number of St. Nicholas would appear in 
November; Mrs. Dodge was taking a short vaca- 
tion in Europe preparatory to the work which 
would come on her, and Stockton, as assistant edi- 
tor, had sent out circulars to authors asking them 
to contribute. This was his report to the publisher: 

'' Thos, B, Aldrich is cordially disposed and will 
probably write for us when he finishes certain work 
which he has on hand. 

" Thos. TV. Higginson is so busy that he cannot 
make any engagements at present. 

" Horatio Alger, Jr., finds that his contract with 
another periodical will not allow him to write for 
us. 

''John Burroughs will try to write something in 
the way of Natural History sketches, as soon as he 
has a little leisure and has seen a specimen of the 
magazine." 

And there were others — Rose Terry Cooke, 
Sarah Orne Jewett, Margaret Ey tinge. "My tem- 
porary MSS. book," continued Stockton, ''has 

[92] 



ST. NICHOLAS 

now twenty-two entries and all the MSS. (but three, 
just received) have been read and disposed of. In 
regard to two I shall confer with Mrs. Dodge before 
taking final action. This is, I believe, all I have 
to report from the American division of St. Nicholas 
editorial department." 

From a publisher's point of view there is one 
drawback in publishing St. Nicholas and it holds 
with all young people's periodicals; readers grow 
out of it; diflaculty in keeping up the circulation 
finally decided the Harpers to give up their Harper's 
Young People, and perhaps the same cause made 
it easy for St. Nicholas, in its early days, to absorb 
haK a dozen children's magazines, including Our 
Young Folks — of blessed memory. The Little 
Corporal was another magazine that was merged 
in St. Nicholas. The average life of a St. Nicholas 
subscription is only three years, and that means 
that one third of the subscribers are replaced every 
year, and, to make a gain, even more subscribers 
are added. Its own back volumes are so attractive 
that they militate against it; a number of old vol- 
umes in the house may keep a family from sub- 
scribing. People will go on for decades taking The 
Century or The Atlantic, but not St. Nicholas. The 
conductors of The Youth's Companion have tried 
to counteract this natural falling-off by printing 

[93] 



A GOLDEN AGE OF AUTHORS 

much that appeals to the whole family, and in a 
paper made up like The Youth's Companion an edi- 
tor can slip in an article for grandpa and there is no 
harm — but every item in the St. Nicholas contents 
counts; it is strictly for young people, and there does 
not seem to be any room for the grown-ups of the 
family. 

Mrs. Dodge lived to conduct St. Nicholas for 
more than thirty years, and in all that time William 
Fayal Clarke, who is now the editor, worked at her 
side. She did a great deal more than that; she wrote 
that classic of Holland, "Hans Brinker, or The 
Silver Skates"; she wrote "Donald and Dorothy," 
"The Land of Pluck," and several volumes of 
poems. Her rhymes and jingles for children are al- 
ways in the right spirit, and often her poetry strikes 
a deeper note, as in "The Two Mysteries": 

** We know not what it is, dear, this sleep so deep and still. 
The folded hands, the awful calm, the cheek so pale and chill. 
The lids that will not lift again, though we may call and call, 
The strange white solitude of peace that settles over all." 

She was always cheerful and ready with repartee 
and amusing comments. I recall a poster exhibition 
when Maxfield Parrish's "Indian Boy" was shown 
for the first time, a brown, nude figure, sitting in 
deep, green grass. Mrs. Dodge thought it was the 
figure of a girl, but Mr. Parrish told her no, it was 

[94] 



ST. NICHOLAS 

a boy. "Well," said Mrs. Dodge, "I call it a young 
boy just bursting into womanhood." 

If one picks up the first volume of St. Nicholas 
with its cover of red and gold — a happy blending 
that has never been changed — he will find even 
then a well-nigh perfect magazine. In the very first 
number, Frank Stockton began a serial story, 
"What Might Have Been Expected"; Donald G. 
Mitchell told of the writing of the "Arabian 
Nights"; Lucretia P. Hale contributed a dear 
little article on "Anna's Doll"; and Celia Thaxter 
a poem "Under the Light-House." There was much 
beside, including an article by "J. S. Stacy," some- 
times called "Joel Stacy" — which it will do no 
harm to say now was one of the names under which 
Mrs. Dodge wrote (and often her contributions 
were the best things in a number), and the depart- 
ment "For Little Folks" was begun and there was 
the very first "Jack-in-the-Pulpit." It opened: 
"My name is Jack. I am a green thing coming up 
as a flower, yet I know a great deal. For why.^ The 
birds come and tell me." And for years "Jack-in- 
the-Pulpit" went on his happy way, telling all 
sorts of wise and strange things, teaching every 
month — but no pupil ever had a suspicion that 
it was teaching! A department, the "St. Nicholas 
League," which was conducted by Albert Bigelow 

[95] 



A GOLDEN AGE OF AUTHORS 

Paine from 1899 to 1908 (and is still going on), is 
responsible for the production of several writers. 
Margaret Widdemer, who was one of two to gain 
the Pulitzer prize for the best volumes of poetry 
published in the year ending June, 1919, began in 
the " League," and it is responsible for starting a 
number of illustrators. 

The first volume that was mine to push and write 
about was the one beginning with November, 
1878, and how well I remember the serials of that 
year and how I read them in manuscript and so 
primed myself to attract more readers. One of 
them was "Eyebright," by Susan Coolidge; an- 
other, "A Jolly Fellowship," by Stockton; a third, 
"Half a Dozen Housekeepers," complete in three 
numbers, by an author whose name is now a 
"'household word," but then fate had concealed her 
by naming her Katharine D. Smith. While she was 
a kindergarten teacher in San Francisco, she mar- 
ried Samuel B. Wiggin, of Boston and Hartford — 
a good friend of mine while we were young men 
together in Hartford. He had an airy manner; he 
hunched up his shoulders, and had a habit of start- 
ing an inquiry with, "Did ever you see.^" or "Did 
ever you know.?^" At Dartmouth he was known as 
"Samuel B. Wiggin, from Bos-ton, by G ." 

A well-known reference book says that this lady 
[.96] 



KATE DOUGLAS WIGGIN 

"organized the first free kindergarten on the Pa- 
cific Coast." To help its coffers she wrote and 
printed, one Christmas, a Httle book called "The 
Birds' Christmas Carol." A member of the Hough- 
ton Mifflin Company saw it, asked and received 
permission to reprint it in a larger way, and so that 
lucky house began to bring out the works of Kate 
Douglas Wiggin, the first one, the little kindergar- 
ten stranger, having a phenomenal sale; and every- 
thing that she has written since has been success- 
ful — each book bringing her a little closer to a 
vast army of readers and making her just a little 
dearer to them. 

It has been interesting to find out since the death 
of Jack London that St. Nicholas had a hand in mak- 
ing a man of him — and so perhaps a writer. As a 
boy he grew up a wharf rat on San Francisco Bay, 
a boy pirate, cruising about with dare-devil com- 
rades, taking junk which did not belong to them, 
"flotsam and jetsam" they called it, and sometimes 
"finders keepers, losers weepers" was their loose 
code. There is an article in St. Nicholas for July, 
1917, telling the story — how Jack wandered into 
the Oakland Public Library one Saturday after- 
noon, and opening a bound volume of St. Nicholas 
containing the number for November, 1884, his eye 

[97] 



A GOLDEN AGE OF AUTHORS 

fell on a story, fitted, he felt, to his own life. It was 
''The Cruise of the Pirate Ship Moonraker," writ- 
ten by Mr. F. Marshall White, the story of a boy 
who fell under the evil influence of trashy, juvenile 
fiction which led him to run away from a good 
home. Becoming the leader of a gang of ''wharf 
rats," he cruised about New York harbor on a cap- 
tured yacht. This he renamed the "Moonraker," 
and, as its captain, he styled himself "The Boy 
Terror." After the boys had enjoyed some semi- 
piratical adventures, the "Moonraker" was over- 
hauled by a police patrol tug, on board of which 
was "The Boy Terror's" father, who punished him 
effectively and in an old-fashioned way, without 
any regard to the fact that his son's band was pres- 
ent to witness their leader's humiliation. 

This story awoke in Jack London the conscious- 
ness that what had happened to the Moonraker's 
captain might some day happen to him and land 
him in the penitentiary. He threw over his old life 
and entered the service of the State as a juvenile 
member of the Fish Patrol. He knew all the tricks 
of the harbor thieves and he cruised about the bay, 
swooping down on oyster poachers, the desperate 
Greeks and Sicilian knife-wielders, the lawless Chi- 
nese, who, when cornered, would put up a treacher- 
ous fight. And Jack enjoyed this life just as much 

[98] 



JACK LONDON 

as he had enjoyed the other, and he carried a clearer 
conscience. Before long he began to write "Stories 
of the Fish Patrol." Then he sent to St. Nicholas his 
novelette, "The Cruise of the Dazzler," which, 
after serializing, we made into a successful book. 
The writing of it led to his doing later that power- 
ful story which The Century serialized, "The Sea 
Wolf." 

I wish I had kept a hundred interesting letters 
that I have had from authors, but this one, a live, 
typical letter from London, I did happen to pre- 
serve : 

Besides the stone house I am building for myself, I 
am at the present time building three other houses, one 
in the hills back of Oakland for my first wife and the 
children, one on the ranch here for my sister, who is my 
ranch superintendent and a very capable and practical 
business woman, and one in a remote outlying part of 
the ranch which will become an immediate asset, be- 
cause I shall rent it for from $50 to $60 per month to 
persons who want a rural vacation on the ranch. 

Perhaps, unfortunately, I was born with a surplus of 
energy. In addition to the steady output of fiction now 
planned, I have also planned two other volumes, of per- 
sonal reminiscences. Each of these shall be written as 
soon as I can get around to it, and each of them will 
merit a sequel. The first book is my personal reminis- 
cences as a writer, from the very beginning of the 
game, when I started to educate myself, up to the pres- 
ent moment. Very similar in a way, although entirely 

[99] 



A GOLDEN AGE OF AUTHORS 

different in treatment from the "John Barleycorn" 
reminiscences. The other will constitute the nine years 
of preliminary farming and my present experiments 
which I am carrying on here at Glen Ellen. 

Please be sure to get the right line on me. I am fear- 
fully and abominably energetic. I keep half a dozen per- 
sons working overtime, handling the work I map out 
and turn over to them. They get insomnia trying to do 
their respective shares, while I sleep like a baby. And 
I do my daily writing (and reading) with which they 
have nothing to do, in addition to cutting out their work 
for them. If I live to be five hundred years old I should 
never be able to do the work I have already mapped out 
and filed away. I have the plots of over one hundred 
novels filed away on my shelves and possibly five hun- 
dred short stories. 

If you should want to look at the first 40,000 words 
of the sea-novel I am writing, say the word and I shall 
immediately forward the manuscript to you. In the 
meantime, please do not fail me on the first advance 
of $1000 in March. 

And that busy life was ended at forty! The first 
time I ever saw London he was the principal speaker 
at a meeting of Socialists in Oakland, California. 
He had just been on a lecture torn* in the East, 
and they had met to do him honor. He told them 
the story of his trip. "I had to give literary lec- 
tures, you know," he said, "but whenever I had 
the chance I gave them the 'Red Revolution' [his 
lecture on socialism]. One Sunday I was asked to 
speak at a certain Western State university. The 

[ 100] 



JACK LONDON 

president called for me and escorted me to the 
chapel. I mounted the pulpit. Before me was a 
Bible, and the meeting was opened with prayer 
[murmurs from the audience] ; I arose to speak, and 
although I knew that in such surroundings another 
kind of speech might be more appropriate, I gave 
them the *Red Revolution.'" [Shouts of joy from 
the Socialists.] 

A little old lady sat next to the friend who 
brought me and he whispered to me, "This is Jack 
London's mother; would you like to know her.^" 

"Indeed, I would." 

And while I was in Oakland I went to see her 
several times, and found her a most delightful old 
lady who, as she said herself, believed in virtually 
everything — including astrology, palmistry, and 
spiritualism. She told me that her husband was the 
originator of the Greenback movement, and much 
that was unusual in Jack's ideas of life may be ac- 
counted for by heredity. 

In Russia, where they have known for years Poe, 
Mrs. Stowe, Mark Twain, and Walt Whitman, 
Jack London is to-day the most popular American 
author. With no international copyright arrange- 
ment between Russia and the United States, pub- 
lishers of that country have been free to help them- 
selves to American material, and it is said that a 

[101] 



A GOLDEN AGE OF AUTHORS 

dozen of them translated and published Jack Lon- 
don's books as fast as they appeared. 

As London grew older and made money from his 
writings, his wants increased. His place at Glen 
Ellen was a great money-absorber, and his publish- 
ers were asked with growing frequency to make ad- 
vances from future royalties for one purpose and 
another. A hundred thousand eucalyptus trees 
were set out, with a pay-roll of $2000 a month 
while the work was going on. They all died. A roof 
of Spanish tile for his new house would cost $3500, 
and must be paid for (the house was burned later). 
A fine stud horse was needed for the farm, price 
$2500. Gradually we grew apart; the stud horse 
was the end. 



CHAPTER VII 

English publishers — The great Boston group of authors — Richard 
Henry Dana and ''Two Years Before the Mast" — Literary agents 

— James T. Fields — John B. Gough — Dry den and his publisher 

— The Civil War and literature — The Centennial — Sidney Lanier 

— John Burroughs — John Muir — Thoreau — Ernest Thompson 
Seton — Margaret Deland — Henry James — Robert Browning — 
Edmund Gosse — Charles Waldstein — H. G. Wells — George 
Moore — Chesterton 

Our American publishing houses are not often very 
old — two generations or three at the most. I once 
asked the American manager of a well-known Eng- 
lish house if any of the original members of the firm 
were still living. "Well, no," he said, "they are n't 
exactly what you would call alive. You see our 
house was founded in 1724." Five years before Ben- 
jamin Franklin started up the press of the Pennsyl- 
vania Gazette ! Perhaps some of those Englishmen 
are lineal descendants of the very first publishers, 
who were undertakers, Egyptian undertakers, 
privileged to get up a book about the men they 
buried; *'The Book of the Dead" it was, a famous 
title in its day. The deceased took one copy; he had 
to, he was dead; and the publisher supplied dupli- 
cates to as many of the family and friends as he 
could persuade to subscribe. I can almost see his 

f 103 1 



A GOLDEN AGE OF AUTHORS 

circular: "We have on hand a few sHghtly worn 
copies [a favorite term with some pubhshers] of 
'The Book of the Dead of Ptah-Hotep ' — a re- 
markably vivid account of the life and works of the 
deceased. Sign the coupon in the margin and send 
at once. Do not delay; on account of the Assyrian 
war papyrus is going up." 

Although New York and Philadelphia held 
greater publishing houses, the group of American 
authors who made their home in or near Boston (by 
common consent, as Bliss Perry says in his Life 
of Whitman, "no new name has been adjudged 
worthy to stand with them"), published their 
books in their home city. And this was said to have 
some connection with the treatment of Richard 
Henry Dana, Jr., by a New York house. Dana was 
a long time seeking a publisher for his "Two Years 
Before the Mast," and a New York firm, after de- 
clining it once, finally offered $250 for the copy- 
right and bought it outright. The book, issued in 
1840, was a great success, but the New York pub- 
lishers are said never to have paid Mr. Dana any- 
thing more. The result was that word was passed 
around Boston to beware of New York publishers, 
and so the great authors of that region brought out 
their books in Boston. The New York firm was 
technically right, and at that time it was not un- 

[ 104 ] 



ENGLISH PUBLISHERS 

usual to buy a book outright and pay nothing more 
to an author under any circumstances. Fielding 
was glad to sell "Tom Jones" for £600 and he 
thought he was driving a bargain, for another pub- 
lisher had declined it at Fielding's own price of 
£25. Andrew Millar, the fortunate purchaser, 
cleared £18,000 from "Tom Jones" before he died. 
A year after publication he paid Fielding another 
hundred pounds, but that was all. Mr. Morgan has 
often paid for an autograph manuscript many 
times more than the author received for all rights. 
I noted recently the sale for $250 of an autograph 
letter of Stevenson to his mother telling her that 
he had received only £20 for all rights in "Virgini- 
bus Puerisque." The letter, telling his mother 
about it, when Stevenson became famous, brought 
two and a half times as much as the copyright on 
the book! 

In our day it is not customary to buy manu- 
scripts outright; the author receives a royalty of 
from ten to twenty per cent on the retail price of 
the book and often gets a large amount in advance, 
either on acceptance of the manuscript or upon 
issue. It is not unusual to pay $5000 or $10,000 in 
advance on a book which the publisher is quite sure 
will earn that amount for the author on the day it 
is published; and sometimes, owing to the compe- 

[ 105 ] 



A GOLDEN AGE OF AUTHORS 

tition brought about usually by literary agents, 
when the publisher is not at all sure that it will 
earn what he is virtually forced to pay. Advance 
payment is a gamble which makes publishing 
much more uncertain than it used to be. The au- 
thor says: "Here, I have spent a year on this book, 
now, you, sir publisher, are a kind of banker — at 
any rate, I consider you one — and I will thank 
you to advance me some money, not because my 
book has earned it but because I need it." 

The literary agent has his uses, and in these days 
of serial rights, dramatic rights, moving-picture 
rights, and second serial rights, perhaps the liter- 
ary agent is inevitable. In a page of his "Autobiog- 
raphy" Sir Walter Besant expressed his gratitude 
to the dean of literary agents, A. P. Watt of Lon- 
don (now deceased), who with his son represented 
Kipling, Hichens, Conan Doyle, Gilbert Parker, 
and many other authors. "By their watch and 
ward," wrote Sir Walter, "my interests have been 
carefully guarded for eighteen years. During that 
time I have always been engaged for the three 
years in advance; I have been relieved from every 
kind of pecuniary embarrassment, my income has 
been multiplied by three at least; and I have had, 
through them, the offer of a great deal more work 
than I could undertake." But there are many 

[ 106 ] 



JAMES T. FIELDS 

authors whose income would not be increased at 
all by dealing with literary agents — authors who 
have one publisher whom they believe in and who 
believes in them. 

The literary agent has done away with much of 
the close friendship that was wont to exist between 
author and publisher. One realizes this in reading 
of the affectionate relation of men like James T. 
Fields with the authors they published. I think I 
owe to Fields some of my interest in books and 
publishing, for when I was a boy he gave a series of 
lectures in Hartford which I attended and which 
made an unusual impression on my youthful mind. 
Fields had lectures on Milton, Scott, and many 
other literary lights, and helpful talks on the "Im- 
portance of Reading" and one on "Cheerfulness," 
in which he spoke of the good done the world by 
pleasant people and of a gravestone in a New Eng- 
land cemetery bearing, with name and age, the line 
"She was so pleasant!" ^ "Think," he said, "what 
a delightful character she must have been to have 
an epitaph like that! One can almost see a choir of 
nightingales perched upon her grave and hear their 
melodious chanting to her memory." 

After listening to James T. Fields, it seemed to 

^ On a stone at East Brookfield, Vermont, is the line: "She was 
very pleasant." This is probably the epitaph which Mr. Fields had 
in mind. 

[ 107] 



A GOLDEN AGE OF AUTHORS 

me that to have to do with books was about the best 
occupation in the world, and my forty years of it 
has convinced me that it is. But Fields used to say 
that he would rather be a fine tenor singer than 
anything else. 

When I was a young man the era of lyceum lec- 
tures had just passed, although I heard Wendell 
Phillips, Gough, and a few others. I shall never for- 
get Gough's lecture on temperance, one hot spring 
night in AUyn Hall, Hartford. While the audience 
gasped for breath, Gough held up a glass of water, 
with the ice tinkling in it, and made a wonderful 
apostrophe to water — water, clear and cold, water 
out of the running brook, water out of the deep 
well; tinkle, tinkle, — and we nearly died of thirst. 
It made such an impression upon me that although 
I have lectured many hundred times, I have never 
drunk a glass of water before an audience, nor per- 
mitted a pitcher to be in sight if I could help it. 

In my own publishing experience I cannot re- 
member that we ever bought a book outright, and 
I feel sure that if we had and if the book had been 
more successful than we expected, the author 
would have received a share of the extra profits. 
When General Grant wrote his war articles for The 
Century, he was to be paid five hundred dollars 
each for the four, — a good price in those days and 

[ 108] 



DRYDEN AND HIS PUBLISHER 

a very small price to-day, — but they were so suc- 
cessful in increasing the circulation of the maga- 
zine, that Mr. Roswell Smith sent General Grant a 
check for $2000 over the payment agreed on. In my 
experience publishers have been pretty good sort of 
people, and I can hardly imagine any of the leading 
publishers of our day having on their list an author 
who would have occasion to write them such a 
poem as Dryden once wrote and sent to his pub- 
lisher when he had been refused an advance. He 
described the publisher as 

"With leering looks, bull-faced and freckled skin, 
With two left legs and Judas-coloured hair 
And frowsy pores that taint the ambient air." 

To avoid the completion of the description the 
publisher sent the money — but one feels that a 
literary agent as a go-between would be welcome, 
if Dryden were the author. 

I remember a few years ago when the manager of 
a telegraph office, near my place of business, told 
one of our messengers that "Yesterday was a great 

day for Jack London; your house and each 

telegraphed him a thousand dollars." 

It was my good f ortime to enter the publishing 
business just in the midst of a most interesting pe- 
riod in the history of American literature, the period 

[ 109] 



A GOLDEN AGE OF AUTHORS 

of its expansion. It is the theory of Professor Pat- 
tee, in his "History of American Literature Since 
1870," that the Civil War is largely responsible for 
this growth; that the war, as he says, educated the 
millions who were enrolled in the armies, most of 
them boys who had never before left their native 
neighborhoods, as well as the leaders who were de- 
veloped everywhere, captains of men, engineers, or- 
ganizers, financiers. "War," says Emerson, "passes 
the power of all chemical solvents, breaking up the 
old adhesions and allowing the atoms of society 
to take a new order." The war had set in motion 
mighty forces that did not stop when peace was 
declared; the West burst into eager life, railroads 
were pushed over the Rockies. Mark Twain, who 
was a part of it all, said later: "The eight years 
in America from 1860 to 1868 uprooted insti- 
tutions that were centuries old, changed the poli- 
tics of a people, transformed the social life of half 
the country, and wrought so profoundly upon the 
entire national character that the influence cannot 
be measured short of two or three generations." 

The era of parlor-table books was over — the 
Amaranth, the Forget-me-not, Female Poets of 
America, the Token, and similar publications — 
wherein, as quoted in Pattee's history, you read for 
diversion such verses as: 

[110] 



SIDNEY LANIER 

"And I think as I sit alone, 

While the night wind is falling around. 
Of a cold, white gleaming stone 
And a long, lone grassy mound." 

The Centennial Exposition of 1876 was another 
quickener of the national life — the West, the 
South, the North came together at Philadelphia to 
strengthen the bonds of peace and good-fellowship. 
I have never forgotten the effect produced on me 
by the cantata which Sidney Lanier wrote for this 
festival, where it was sung to music by Dudley 
Buck — I had never heard of Lanier before, and 1 
wondered at his boldness in writing in such, to me, 
strange and effective meter. 

"From this himdred-terraced height. 
Sight more large with nobler light 
Ranges down yon towering years." 

Changing to 

"Mayflower, Mayflower, slowly hither flying. 
Trembling westward o'er yon balking sea," 

and then to 

"Jamestown, out of thee, 
Plymouth, thee — thee Albany, 
Winter cries, ye freeze : away I 
Fever cries, ye hum : away / , . . 

"Huguenots whispering yea in the dark, 
Puritans answering yea in the dark!" 

[Ill] 



A GOLDEN AGE OF AUTHORS 

I thought that I had never known such a perfect 
example of music in words. 

The hterature that was produced in these years 
by the new writers was purely American. Much of 
what Longfellow and Emerson and Hawthorne had 
done could have been the work of foreign writers — 
much, but far from all. "Evangeline" and "Hia- 
watha" and "The Scarlet Letter" are of the bone 
and sinew of America, but such men as George W. 
Cable, Bret Harte, Mark Twain, and Joel Chand- 
ler Harris were observers of actual scenes and 
happenings — reporters whose productions were 
touched with the divine fire of literary art. 

The Philadelphia Centennial was also a great 
awakener of the art sense of the nation; it im- 
planted an appreciation of art which was new to 
the American people. Hundreds of thousands of 
those who had never seen a good picture in their 
lives saw them there. The magazines of the time 
benefited by this, and after 1876 they could print a 
higher order of illustration and have it appreciated. 
New artists, too, were born of that great exhibi- 
tion. 

A writer whose published work began in those 
days was John Burroughs, a lovely man he was and 
is. We were together once in Washington, and I 

[ 112 ] 



JOHN BURROUGHS 

have never forgotten Burroughs's criticism of a 
group of stuffed animals in a taxidermist's window 
— he explained that a squirrel never sat just that 
way when he was eating a nut. It meant nothing at 
all to me, but it meant something to Burroughs. 

It is forty-five years (and he was no fledgling 
writer then) since he made his first contribution to 
Scribner's Monthly in the number for August, 
1873, with an article, "The Blue-Bird," '* the peace- 
harbinger; in him the celestial and the terrestrial 
strike hands and are fast friends." John Burroughs 
never had a great idea of any "mission" for him- 
seK or any other; "It makes but little difference to 
which school you go," he wrote once, "whether to 
the woods or to the city. A sincere man learns 
pretty much the same thing in both places." 

Genuine simplicity is the keynote of most of the 
nature-lovers I have known — John Muir, whose 
first contribution to Scribner's Monthly came in 
1878, forty years ago, was like Burroughs in that; 
and another is Luther Burbank, writer as well as 
plant-wizard. I remember him, sitting in a Con- 
necticut rocking-chair in his simple home at Santa 
Rosa, California, telling us of the future possibili- 
ties of the edible cactus which grew out under 
the window. I ate some of it — and was glad I did 
not have to depend on cactus for my daily food, 

[113] 



A GOLDEN AGE OF AUTHORS 

though in an emergency I dare say it would save 
life. 

To-day American nature writers are popular, 
but in 1865 no less a personage than James Rus- 
sell Lowell, writing in the North American Review, 
regarded the writings of Thoreau as "one more 
symptom of the general liver complaint." "I look," 
he said, "upon a great deal of the modern senti- 
mentalism about nature as a mark of disease." 

It was said of Thoreau that "he talked about 
Nature just as if she'd been born and brought up 
in Concord." He was not read for a quarter of a 
century after he brought out his first book, "A 
Week on the Concord and Merrimac Rivers," in 
1849. Thoreau settled with the publisher of that 
book, four years after it appeared, and only two 
hundred and thirteen copies of the thousand 
printed having been sold, he brought home the re- 
mainder in a wheelbarrow and stored them away 
in his attic. He made this entry in his journal: "I 
now have a library of nearly nine hundred volumes, 
over seven hundred of which I wrote myself." I 
don't know why, but most of us regard Thoreau as 
a very elderly person — always elderly, probably 
by reason of the half -circle of whiskers seen in his 
portraits. He was thirty-two when he made that 
entry, and he died, as Stevenson died, at forty-four. 

[ 114 ] 



MARGARET DELAND 

Perhaps the best selHng nature writer of all to- 
day is Seton-Thompson or Thompson Seton. When 
I first knew him he was drawing pictures of ani- 
mals for The Century Dictionary and signing them 
''E.E.T." — Edward Ernest Thompson. I watched 
him as, having sloughed off the Edward, he grew a 
Seton and attached it, with a hyphen, to the front 
of Thompson, finally bringing it around, hyphen- 
less, to the rear, where it stands to-day. But wild 
animals that Thompson Seton does not know are 
hardly worth knowing. His "Biography of a Griz- 
zly" and "Wild Animals I Have Known" are 
classics. 

A novelist whose work I have never published, 
but who has been for years a dear personal friend, 
is Margaret Deland — a born writer, fortunate 
enough to have had a friend who recognized it and 
brought her a great pile of pads and a lot of pencils 
and set her to work on her first novel, "John Ward, 
Preacher." Not long ago, writing to me of another 
matter, she referred to the reception of "John 
Ward, Preacher," when she was called a "scurril- 
ous liar" and "libeler." A religious newspaper said 
of another book of hers that "the blasphemy of 
IngersoU and the obscenity of Zola met in its 
pages." There is nothing that makes people see 

[115] 



A GOLDEN AGE OF AUTHORS 

redder than differences in religious belief. Mrs. De- 
land wrote her first poem in a butcher's shop and on 
his brown wrapping paper. 

Henry James I saw first one Sunday afternoon, 
more than thirty years ago, at Edmund Gosse's in 
London. Gosse had delightful Sunday afternoons, 
when the servants went out and the literary guests 
waited upon themselves at an informal supper. Rob- 
ert Browning was there — an English banker to the 
life, never talking about poetry, they told me, if he 
could help it. I can remember nothing of Browning 
— I suppose he did not talk to me, and as for Henry 
James I recall only his going around with a pile of 
small plates dealing one out very properly to each 
guest. 

Edmund Gosse, poet, critic, and author of many 
books, was our literary representative in England 
for years, and through his unfailing efforts we 
secured many valuable literary prizes in the days 
before agents had come into their present vogue. 
Mrs. Gosse and Mrs. Alma Tadema were sisters, 
daughters of a famous cocoa manufacturer, and 
they were known among their intimates as " Grate- 
ful " and " Comforting." 

On this same visit to England (my first, in 1886) 
I spent a Sunday with Professor Charles Wald- 

[ 116 ] 



CHARLES WALDSTEIN 

stein at his pleasant quarters in King's College, 
Cambridge. We had published his "Essays on the 
Art of Pheidias." Waldstein, who has since been 
knighted, was at that time director of the Fitz- 
william Museum, and he returned to Cambridge 
as professor after he had been for some years the 
head of the American School of Archaeology at 
Athens. With my family I passed some weeks in 
Athens in the spring of 1890 while he was there, 
and we had many happy evenings, singing college 
songs with the students, led by the director. 

At Cambridge we dined with fellows and dons in 
a wonderful wainscoted hall. Certainly they lived 
on the fat of the land, and on the juice of still sun- 
nier lands. It was a delightful Saturday night, but 
never shall I forget an embarrassing incident of 
the following morning. Waldstein's English valet, 
tapping lightly on my door, entered with "the 'ot 
water, sir," and proceeded to put the room to 
rights and to brush my clothes. These had been left 
in a singular commingling upon a chair. Now I sup- 
pose it has happened to every one to wear gar- 
ments for a last time — obviously it must have 
happened. I had returned the day before from a 
long tour on the Continent and in my bag (which 
the man had not unpacked because I had myself 
taken nearly everything out) were fresh and comely 

[ 117 ] 



A GOLDEN AGE OF AUTHORS 

substitutes just bought in London. That valet held 
up my articles of clothing, one by one, brushed 
each of them stolidly and with equal consideration. 
I pulled the bedclothes over my head. 

The last Sunday of the term had come just be- 
fore my visit and Waldstein had held an afternoon 
reception in his rooms, when Prince "Eddie" 
(known as "Collars and Cuffs *')> eldest son of the 
Prince of Wales, was present. The young man had 
been put under Waldstein's supervision by his 
father, afterwards King Edward VII. Prince "Ed- 
die" died, it will be remembered, and the present 
King George V is a younger brother. Henry James 
was there that afternoon and Waldstein asked the 
prince if Mr. James could be presented. "Who's 
Henry James .^" asked the young man, and on be- 
ing told that he was an American novelist resident 
in his realm expressed no interest and turned on his 
heel. 

They told a story of the prince, who did not 
seem to be very popular with his fellows. One day 
while out walking in the rain he encountered a 
classmate his head buried in a hedge. 

"What are you trying to do.^" asked Prince 
"Eddie." 

"Lighting my pipe." 

"Can't I help you.?" 

[ 118 ] 



H. G. WELLS 

"You teach your grandmother to suck eggs," 
was the reply; the young man quickly adding, 
"Oh, say, you know, I beg your pardon; I had for- 
gotten who your grandmother is." 

It is further reported that the Royal Family 
were much amused over the idea of Her Majesty, 
the Queen, being taught to suck eggs. 

In later years, during frequent trips to England, 
I have come to know a good many of the writers of 
to-day. 

Mr. H. G. Wells is with a few changes "Mr. Brit- 
ling," and the home described in the book is his 
home. Just before "Mr. Britling Sees It Through" 
appeared, I had a letter from Mr. Wells saying, 
"You'll find memories of your visit to Dunmow 
in 'Mr. Britling Sees It Through,' which will be 
published in September. Since you were here the 
house has been rebuilt." Knowing that there was 
an American in the book I had some qualms, but 
except for a few things that were said by some of us 
there was no reminder of me. The young German 
tutor was there, with big spectacles, his hair 
brushed straight back from his forehead — dead 
now, perhaps, in a Russian trench, as in the story. 
Letty is real, as is her husband, who did Mr. 
Wells's copying. One of his treasures hangs over 

[119] 



A GOLDEN AGE OF AUTHORS 

the study fireplace, an enlargement of a photo- 
graph of Langley's flying machine, built before the 
Wrights built theirs, flying above the Potomac 
River. 

In "Mr. Brltling Sees It Through" he has risen 
above the Wells we have known hitherto, and his 
letter to the German father will not be soon for- 
gotten. 

George Moore, a cheery, elderly gentleman with 
white hair and a ruddy face, is just about what his 
books show him to be. "What are the conven- 
tions?" he asked; — "I put my foot through 
them." 

Chesterton is about the biggest man I ever saw, 
considerably more than six feet in height, with 
tangled curls on a great head set on his massive 
body. I rode with him once in an open automobile 
down Oxford Street and Piccadilly, and he at- 
tracted as much attention as the King going to 
open Parliament. "Why," I said, "they all know 
you." "Yes," replied Chesterton in a grieved tone, 
"and if they don't they ask." 



CHAPTER VIII 

Scribner's Monthly the first to take advertising — The growth of adver- 
tising — S. S. McClure — Edward Bok — Magazine editors — 
George William Curtis — The twenty-fifth anniversary of the dedi- 
cation at Gettysburg — Lincoln at Gettysburg and at the Cooper In- 
stitute — A Lincoln lecture — The Barnard statue of Lincoln 

What contributed more than anything else to the 
financial success of Scribner's Monthly from the 
first was the determination of Roswell Smith to 
take advertising. It seems strange to think of it to- 
day, but up to the beginning of that periodical 
magazines did not print advertising at all. A few 
small notices had sometimes appeared, but the 
business of advertisements, having a man who gave 
all his time to it, began with Scribner's Monthly. 
One of the Harper firm had strongly advised Ros- 
well Smith not to attempt it, and for years after 
Scribner's Monthly had begun to hew its way 
through the prejudices of advertisers and of the 
public, Harper's had no advertising whatever ex- 
cept that of the publications of the house. 

The firm of Harper & Bros, felt, perhaps, that it 
was good policy to keep its magazine clear of every- 
thing but announcements of its own publications, 
for these included not only the most important list 

[ 121 ] 



A GOLDEN AGE OF AUTHORS 

of books that any American house could boast — 
the great EngHsh novehsts were all there — but 
also Harper's Weekly, Harper's Bazar and the 
Young People, then the Round Table. Mr. Row- 
ell, the well-known advertising agent, says in his 
book: "Harper's in 1868 not only did not seek ad- 
vertisements but actually declined to take them. 
The writer remembers listening with staring eyes, 
while Fletcher Harper the younger related that he 
had in the early seventies refused an oflfer of $18,- 
000 for the use of the last page of the magazine for 
a year for an advertisement of the Howe Sewing 
Machine." 

But Scribner's Monthly had no other publica- 
tions to consider — the Scribner firm used its pages 
for their announcements, but not to any great ex- 
tent. They paid like any other advertiser, though 
perhaps at a special rate. The Scribner book house 
and "Scribner & Co.," formed in the beginning to 
publish Scribner's Monthly, were always separate 
houses. 

In building up magazine advertising Roswell 
Smith was creating a monster of competition. It is 
the income from advertisements that has made 
possible the hundreds of magazines that cover the 
news-stands to-day. Without' the "ads" very few 
of them would be alive. An ordinary page in The 

[ 122 ] 



THE GROWTH OF ADVERTISING 

Ladies' Home Journal costs, at the time this is writ- 
ten, $6,500 for a single issue; the back cover, in 
color, $12,000; an ordinary page in The Saturday- 
Evening Post, $5,000, and the double-page in the 
middle, in color, $14,000. In a year the last named 
paper contains more than fifteen million dollars 
worth of advertising, and it seems likely that there 
will soon be a greater demand for space than it can 
supply. Five thousand dollars seems a great deal 
to pay for a single page of advertising, but if the 
magazine containing it has a circulation of two 
million copies, the advertiser is getting his circu- 
lars distributed among just the people he wants to 
reach at a cost of four circulars for a cent. In old 
times such a book as the Encyclopaedia Britannica 
would be sold by canvassers — nothing else would 
be thought of. To-day advertising does it all — 
clever advertising it is too, the price carefully con- 
cealed, the only expenditure actually in sight being 
the dollar down. 

Robert Bonner, who published The New York 
Ledger, was himself a great advertiser, but he 
never would allow a line of advertising to appear in 
his Ledger. He would take a whole page in a news- 
paper and print on it over and over again, "Fanny 
Fern writes only for The Ledger." "I get all the 
money I can lay hands on," he once said, ''and throw 

[ 123 ] 



A GOLDEN AGE OF AUTHORS 

it out to the newspapers, and before I get back to 
the office, there it all is again and a lot more with it." 

Before the Great War, England was spending 
half a billion dollars a year in advertising, and the 
rest of the world five or six times as much, that is, in 
all, between two and three billion dollars a year; 
and some of the cleverest minds in the world were 
engaged on ways of spending it; — and yet that 
know-it-all, Samuel Johnson, said, in 1759, "The 
trade of advertising is now so near to perfection 
that it is not easy to propose any improvement." 
In our day we are almost dependent on advertising, 
from the time we get up in the morning and take a 
bath in an advertised tub, putting on underclothes 
that we bought on the strength of the beautiful 
wrinkleless pictm-es in the back of our favorite 
magazine, until we spend the closing hours at a 
theater which we choose by looking through the 
advertisements in the evening paper. 

There was a time when the advertising solicitor 
was hardly allowed to enter a front door, and it 
was expected when he did get in that he would 
have a liberal allowance of time to cool his heels. I 
have never forgotten my own experience, perhaps 
twenty-five or more years ago, getting advertise- 
ments for the programme of a great bazar to be 
held in the Metropolitan Opera House, in aid of a 

[ 124 ] 



THE GROWTH OF ADVERTISING 

hospital of which I was one of the directors. I went 
home at night in those soUciting days angry clear 
through at the treatment which I frequently re- 
ceived, and I can remember to this day the firms 
which were kind — and kindest of all the woman 
proprietor of a popular hair tonic who made me a 
friend for life by taking the back cover and doing it 
as if she thought there was a chance that I was a 
gentleman. God bless you, Mrs. Ayer! 

If that was the attitude of the business houses of 
New York toward a man who was representing a 
charity, what must it have been toward those who 
were making a business of selling advertising.? But 
that day is long past, and the advertising man is 
now treated in a business way. Great salaries are 
paid to clever advertisement writers, for, indeed, 
the way it is put makes all the difference in the 
world. There is a story of the advertisement of an 
imibrella lost in church, a conventional "ad" written 
by the umbrella loser. No answers. *'Let me try," 
said an advertising man, and inserted this: "If the 
gentleman who was seen to take a silver-handled 
umbrella from the Parish Church on Sunday last at- 
taches any value to the Christian character he has 
hitherto borne, he will return the article immedi- 
ately to No. 1 Blank Street. He is known." It is 
said that a dozen umbrellas were sent in. 

[ 125] 



A GOLDEN AGE OF AUTHORS 

The publishers' lot is far from being a happy one 
to-day. Advertising in the monthlies has decreased, 
the price of paper has gone up, magazine prices 
have had to be increased, the fifteen-centers have 
become twenty-centers, and publishers whistle to 
keep up their courage, put in a few more pages, and 
call it *'a bigger, better magazine." The thirty-five- 
centers cannot increase, for the simple reason that 
their publishers know people would not pay any 
more. They have to stand the reduced income, but 
fortunately for them there is more margin in 
thirty-five cents than in fifteen. 

Time was when the advertising in a periodical 
was classified, so that it became a directory of the 
best goods on the market, but the directory days 
are over, and some magazines have even changed 
their form, so that with a larger page they may run 
reading matter beside the advertisements, to catch 
the eye of the reader, as many of the weeklies have 
been doing for years; with the result that some- 
times we chase a story from the opening page, led 
by that will-o'-the-wisp, *' Continued on page so- 
and-so," through an entire periodical, vaulting an 
occasional double-page "ad," until the heroine 
falls into the hero's arms just as we are about to 
tm'n the back cover. 

[ 126 ] 



S. S. McCLURE 

S. S. McClure was in our oflSce for a few months 
and worked in my publicity department. He had 
come to New York with ten dollars in his pocket 
and a letter of introduction to Roswell Smith from 
Colonel Pope of Boston, for whom McClure had 
edited a little magazine called The Wheelman. At 
first Mr. Smith helped him to get a place at the 
De Vinne Press. When later he took him into our 
office, we found very soon that we had that rara 
avis, a clerk with ideas. In his "Autobiography" 
McClure tells how the plan came to him for a syn- 
dicate which should sell stories to the newspapers 
and that he first offered the idea to us, but that we 
did not think best to take it up — nor was it best, 
for our heart and soul were in the two magazines 
The Century and St. Nicholas, and these must be 
first considered in any buying of stories. But I have 
a very different notion of the way that the idea 
came to McClure; it was a Christmas supplement 
to country newspapers that he wanted to get up at 
first; and I remember the four-page dummy which 
he made and pasted together to show the plan — 
on the first page a heading, "Christmas Supple- 
ment to ," a picture in the middle, and a cou- 
ple of stories on the rest of that page and on pages 
2 and 3. On the fourth page was to be a prospectus 
of the coming year of The Century, and the idea 

I 127 ] 



A GOLDEN AGE OF AUTHORS 

was to sell this four-page sheet for a trifling sum to 
cover cost of paper, or to give it away if necessary, 
for the sake of advertising the prospectus in the 
country paper which would use it in quantities. 

Mr. Smith felt that McClure ought to work out 
such a scheme for himself, and he gave him his 
blessing and a month's salary, telling him to come 
back to us if he wanted to, but that he had it in him 
to make his way alone. McClure then modified the 
Christmas supplement plan, and instead of at- 
tempting to get up a paper, he bought a story, had 
it set up in a newspaper oflSce, and sold the proofs 
and the right of simultaneous publication to a 
number of papers. McClure paid $250 for the story 
and his returns were $50 less than that. He says in 
his "Autobiography" that he then came to our 
office, borrowed $5 from a young man he had 
worked with, went to Philadelphia and sold more 
stories, borrowed money from a relative and went 
to Washington, sold more stories, and so home to 
New York. 

McClure tells, too, of the long uphill fight he had 
over that syndicate, and no sooner was it well 
launched than he was seized with the idea of pub- 
lishing a magazine, and then came another long 
fight, for the magazine was started at the height of 
the panic of 1893. He printed 20,000 copies of the 

[ 128 ] 



S. S. McCLURE 

first number — the News Company returned 12,000 
unsold. The 8000 sold brought in $600 and had 
cost thousands. Colonel Pope gave him a check for 
$1000 for advertising to be done in the future, 
the printer gave him more credit, and some time 
after, when he was at the very lowest ebb, kind- 
hearted Conan Doyle, who was in this country on 
a lecture tour, told him he would like to put some 
money into his business, that he believed in the 
magazine and in him, and drew his check for 
$5000. ''When that check was written," says Mc- 
Clure, "it put new life into the office staff. Every 
one felt a new vigor and a new hope." 

And so McClure has gone on — a dreamer from 
boyhood, but a dreamer of great dreams, a square 
man, never seeking riches, only to do great things, 
and he has had friends who believed in him and 
helped him. There never was a man in whose brain 
more new ideas tumbled over themselves in an 
effort to get out — not all were good. Perhaps there 
was one such man, Roswell Smith; he would come 
down to the office every morning with about three 
new ideas for the business. It would usually take us 
till eleven o'clock to prove to Mr. Smith that two 
of them were not worth doing — and all the rest of 
the day to carry out the other one. 

I remember coming up from Washington once, 
[ 129 ] 



A GOLDEN AGE OF AUTHORS 

when McClure entered the buffet-smoker and sat 
down beside me. Immediately he began to tell me 
of the big ideas that had come to him for his maga- 
zine while he was in Washington. He checked them 
off on his fingers — one, two, three, four, five, x^ifter 
a while he wandered across the car, sat down beside 
another man, and presently I saw the fingers being 
counted off, one, two, three, four, five, — and I 
knew that the other man too was being made the 
recipient of a literary confidence. He once engaged 
Elizabeth Stuart Phelps to write a life of Christ, 
but he had to decline it, because, as he said, he 
wanted ''a more snappy life of Christ." 

Edward Bok, who has been for more than 
twenty-five years the very successful editor of The 
Ladies' Home Journal, started "Bok's Literary 
Leaves" in as small a way as McClure started his 
syndicate. As a boy in Brooklyn, Bok collected 
autographs and attracted the attention of Henry 
Ward Beecher, who was always his friend. While 
he was an advertising solicitor for a house-paper 
which the Scribners published — and I remember 
as if it were only yesterday his coming in to get ad- 
vertisements — he began to write to literary people, 
finding out their plans, what they would write next, 
where they were going for the summer, harmless 

[ 130] 



EDWARD BOK 

and interesting bits of information which he made 
up into Httle items, with the permission of the peo- 
ple treated, seUing a half-column of them weekly 
to a syndicate of papers. This gave him a great 
acquaintance with authors and their confidence, 
and when Mr. Curtis, having a small paper of about 
30,000 circulation, looked around for an editor, 
Bok was chosen. As Bok has made a great success 
of The Ladies' Home Journal, so George Lorimer, 
untrammeled, has made an equal success of The 
Saturday Evening Post, for it has always been Mr. 
Curtis's policy to get the best man he can find for 
a position and then give him his head. 

There is perhaps no periodical in America the 
personality of whose editor counts for so much with 
its readers as Bok's personality counts with the 
readers of The Ladies' Home Journal unless we ex- 
cept Mrs. Honore Willsie, editor of The Delineator. 

The great public does not know who edits most 
of the magazines of the day, and oftentimes de- 
partments which bring the writer's personality 
very close to its readers are carried on for years 
without the reader knowing whose that personality 
is. Of late the name of the writer of the *' Editor's 
Easy Chair" in Harper's Magazine has been 
printed, but for decades the public read the "Easy 
Chair" without knowing the author. Donald G. 

[131 ] 



A GOLDEN AGE OF AUTHORS 

Mitchell ("Ik Marvel") wrote it at first, referring 
to it as "an old red-backed easy chair"; then 
George William Curtis. Since December, 1900, 
William Dean Howells has filled the "Chair." For 
seventy years, with a few intervals, this delightful 
department has gone on, touching lightly upon the 
topics which filled people's minds, carrying back 
their thoughts to other days, or helping them to 
store up wisdom for the future. 

George William Curtis, reformer, journalist, lit- 
terateur, was the orator of the day at the celebra- 
tion of the twenty-fifth anniversary of the dedica- 
tion of the cemetery at Gettysburg — a dedication 
which will always outrank any other of its kind 
in the minds of Americans by reason of Lincoln's 
immortal words spoken on that July day in 1863, 
with the war still raging, its outcome uncertain 
except to the clear faith of the speaker and a few 
like him. Through Gilder's thoughtfulness I was 
one of a party which went with Mr. Curtis to the 
celebration in July, 1888. We had a private car, 
which was switched off close to the battle-field, and 
on our car we ate and slept for three days. In a 
copy of General Abner Doubleday's little booklet, 
"Gettysburg Made Plain," which I must have 
taken with me, are the autographs of all the mem- 

[ 132 ] 



/•^ 



71 



n 



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A PAGE OF THE AUTOGRAPHS OF GEORGE WILLIAM CURTIS AND HIS PARTY ON 

THE TRIP TO GETTYSBURG, JULY 3 AND 4, 1888 

Mr. Curtis delivered the oration on the occasion of the celebration of the twenty-fifth anniversary 

of the dedication of the cemetery. The autographs were written on the fly-leaf of the pamphlet 

"Gettysburg Made Plain." 



GEORGE WILLIAM CURTIS 

bers of the party. I was the youngest and am the 
only one now Hving. 

George William Curtis 

Silas W. Burt (at one time Naval Officer of the Port 
of New York) 

W. W. Ellsworth 

Alfred P. Bolles 

James Burt 

Richard Watson Gilder 

Henry G. Pearson (the independent Postmaster of 
New York City) 

William Potts. 

Walter Howe (a Congressman who was drowned at 
Newport, Rhode Island, soon after) 

John E. Parsons 

E. L. Godkin (editor of the New York Evening Post 
and The Nation) 

Francis C. Barlow (a general who fought at Gettys- 
burg and who visited it then for the first time since 
the battle) 

We numbered twelve. Walter Howe presided at 
table, and we sat long over our meals. Every man 
was a civil-service reformer and a personal friend 
of Mr. Curtis. Such talk! Why could it not have 
been recorded.^ There was a book in it — a book of 
literary and political reminiscence, a record of high 
endeavor, enlivened with repartee and wit. 

The way in which our orator, Mr. Curtis, used 
his notes made a great impression upon me. His 
was a long speech, notes were necessary, but to use 

[ 133 ] 



A GOLDEN AGE OF AUTHORS 

a desk was not advisable in an outdoor address be- 
fore a great multitude. He had had the manuscript 
set up for Harper's Weekly (of which he was edi- 
tor), the proofs cut and pasted on strong slips like a 
pack of cards which he held comfortably in his left 
hand, using both hands for gestures. One who tries 
this should make no secret of his notes, but of course 
he should be so familiar with his speech as not to be 
at all confined to them. 

Mr. Curtis stood in the new rostrum; the old 
one which Lincoln used was no longer there. We all 
know how little impression was made by Lincoln's 
speech at the time of its delivery. A Gettysburg 
lady, a dear friend, who died only a few months 
ago, told me of her own feelings, when as a girl of 
fifteen she stood in the swaying crowd, just under 
the rostrum through Edward Everett's long ora- 
tion. "And then," she said, "the tallest and most 
awkward man I ever saw in my life got up and said 
a few words and we were all glad to go home." 

Of Lincoln's awkwardness as a speaker Mr. Ce- 
phas Brainerd, now deceased, has often told me. 
He said that Lincoln's favorite gesture during the 
famous Cooper Institute speech was rubbing his 
stomach with one hand, gesticulating with the 
other, and then changing hands. But no speech be- 
fore or since ever made such an impression upon 

[ 134 ] 



LINCOLN IN NEW YORK 

Mr. Brainerd or upon Mr. Joseph H. Choate or any 
of the distinguished company which, as Mr. Choate 
said, Mr. Lincoln that night "held in the hollow of 
his hand." William CuUen Bryant presided; David 
Dudley Field escorted the speaker to the platform. 
Mr. Brainerd and Mr. C. C. Nott afterwards 
printed a pamphlet in which every one of the many 
historical allusions in the address, delivered en- 
tirely without notes, was verified. Mr. Brainerd 
and Mr. Nott (the latter was appointed by Mr. 
Lincoln later a judge of the United States Court 
of Claims) were a committee of the Young Men's 
Central Republican Union which brought Mr. 
Lincoln to New York, paying him two hundred 
dollars for the speech, and it was the duty of these 
two young men to see that the speaker was con- 
ducted to the hall and returned to his hotel, the 
Astor House. I do not know how their guest 
arrived, but Mr. Nott was to take him back. Mr. 
Lincoln wanted to walk, and the two men started 
together down Broadway, but Mr. Lincoln's boots 
hurt him, and they went over to a side avenue and 
took a horse-car. When Mr. Nott arrived at his 
own street he told his guest to stay right in the car 
and it would stop just beside the Astor House — 
and so, good-night. This was in February, 1860. It 
was in April, 1865, that the body of Lincoln lay in 

[ 135 ] 



A GOLDEN AGE OF AUTHORS 

state in the rotunda of the New York City Hall, 
while half a million people passed by in silence to 
honor the great dead. Only five years lay between 
the dates, but what eventful years they were ! The 
almost unknown speaker who had come out of the 
West, had led his country safely through its great 
conflict and had found a place beside Washington 
in the American Valhalla. 

A lecture which I prepared for the one-hun- 
dredth-year celebration of Lincoln's birth, in 1909, 
was given that season at the Century Club, Mr. 
Gilder, then chairman of the Committee on Art 
and Literature, presiding. At the close of the lec- 
ture he asked all those present (in an audience of 
perhaps 150 or 200 men) who had seen Lincoln, to 
stand, and twenty-six stood. Gilder was among 
them, for as a young soldier he had guarded the 
bier at Philadelphia, and had seen Lincoln dead in 
his coffin. Then he asked all those who had talked 
with Lincoln to stand, and thirteen arose. I wish I 
had their names. I remember Mr. Brainerd, and 
Horace White who reported the Lincoln-Douglas 
debates for the Chicago Tribune. Mr. Choate was 
not present, but he heard the lecture a few weeks 
later at the home of Mr. John S. Kennedy, and 
gave us afterwards his own impressions of the 
Cooper Institute speech. He said that Lincoln was 

[ 136 ] 



THE BARNARD LINCOLN 

awkward, but "when he spoke he was trans- 
formed." 

There has been a great deal said against the 
Barnard statue of Lincoln in Cincinnati, and many 
of our best critics have expressed the hope that a 
replica of it will not be sent abroad. I am inclined 
to hope so, too, for I fear it would be misunder- 
stood; the Saint-Gaudens standing Lincoln is fitting 
and safer for the purpose, the figure is more like 
what Europe has learned to regard as the figure of 
a statesman. Yet I cannot believe that many of the 
critics have seen the Barnard statue, but rather 
have judged from photographs. Some of them have 
called it "ridiculous" and "deformed," an "un- 
couth backwoodsman," "awkward," "meaning- 
less," its "hands clasped on its stomach." I stood 
before the statue for an hour one afternoon in Cin- 
cinnati, and I found the embodiment of a man with 
a soul, a soul which might indeed have been Lin- 
coln's, a figure which to me typified the burden- 
bearer of the ages.^ 

The face is a poetic realization of Volk's life- 
mask — but living, suffering. Of the clothes you do 
not think at all, any more than you would if you 

^ Since this was written it has been decided that the Saint-Gaudens 
Lincohi shall go to London, the Barnard to Manchester. A wise de- 
cision, nor will Manchester have a statue of which it will be in the 
least ashamed. 

[ 13'7' ] 



A GOLDEN AGE OF AUTHORS 

were talking with Lincoln himseK. The face holds 
you. If you finally let your eyes rest on the clothes 
you will not find them noticeably ill-fitting. The 
collar is lower than any I have happened to see in a 
portrait, but it is quite possible that Lincoln wore 
such a collar. The Adam's apple is very prominent 
— Lincoln's was — and in the bronze it shines, 
which is a fault. One hand holds the other wrist in 
an awkward but not unnatural way. The feet are 
larger and coarser than in any photograph I have 
seen, much too large I think; I said so to a man 
standing near who wanted to talk about the statue. 
He was certainly a man of the people, tobacco juice 
ran down his chin, and his breath was redolent of 
the whiskey which comes from just across the Ohio 
River. 

"Why," he said, "them feet had to be big to bal- 
ance that big figger. You would n't like it if he'd 
'a' been anchored to small feet." 

Just then two ragged little urchins, a corner of 
the shirt-tail of one sticking far out of a hole in his 
trousers, came running up to the statue, climbed 
on the rough stone which forms the pedestal and 
began patting those big feet, for the figure stands 
low, the ankles about level with the spectator's 
waist. 

Saint-Gaudens's Lincoln is the statesman, the 
[ 138 ] 



THE BARNARD LINCOLN 

President, typified by the chair of state which 
stands behind it. The striking difference in the fig- 
ures is that such a chair would be utterly incongru- 
ous behind Barnard's statue, which is rather the 
awkward speaker at Cooper Institute. But it would 
be a hardened critic who could stand without preju- 
dice, before the rougher, more uncouth figure, and 
let its eyes look into his eyes, its soul speak to his 
soul, and not be moved by the experience. 



CHAPTEE IX 

Richard Watson Gilder 

One of the greatest privileges of my life was an as- 
sociation for more than thirty years with Richard 
Watson Gilder. He became editor-in-chief of the 
magazine on the death of Dr. Holland in 1881, and 
even before Dr. Holland's death authors and art- 
ists were coming to us on account of Gilder. No 
stronger and no kinder editor ever lived. As quoted 
in the volume ''Letters from Richard Watson Gil- 
der," edited by his daughter Rosamond, Bill Nye 
wrote of him that "he could return rejected manu- 
scripts in such a gentle and caressing way that the 
disappointed scribblers came to him from hundreds 
of miles away to thank him for his kindness — and 
stay to dinner with him." And George W. Cable 
said: "I think he was peculiarly an author's editor, 
and not merely a publisher's. He never dealt with 
one's literary products merely as wares for the 
market, but with their source, the author, and with 
his pages as things still hopefully in the making. 
Throughout his career he was one of the finest up- 
lifting forces in the literary world." 

He came of a talented family; all of his brothers 
[ 140 ] 



JEANNETTE GILDER 

and sisters were clever people; his sister Jeannette, 
who with her brother Joseph founded and for many 
years carried on The Critic, was a woman of rare 
gifts — the first and best of New York women 
journahsts. When she was about to start The 
Critic she asked Roswell Smith's opinion on her 
venture, and he gave her Punch's advice to those 
about to marry. Nevertheless she went on and 
made a periodical which, while never greatly profit- 
able, became a rea] force in current literature and 
helped to interest the public in books and writers. 

For years she wrote — newspaper articles, fic- 
tion, plays; out of her great, kind heart she helped 
struggling authors (and struggling publishers), she 
acted as a medium to bring together authors and 
publishers, playwrights and managers. She was a 
general mother-superior in the literary world of 
New York. She was independent, was the first of 
her sex to shed the cumbersome hoop-skirt and 
wear a dress which came nearer to the supports 
which God had given her. She wore a man's shirt 
and collar and stock, and a coat that was almost 
a man's, but she was never a suffragist; she could 
go anywhere and everywhere that men went; her 
dress was a protest against sex allure or any thought 
but straight business; she always looked comforta- 
ble and perfectly proper — and the publisher who 

[ 141 ] 



A GOLDEN AGE OF AUTHORS 

would not push a pile of manuscripts off a chair and 
gladly make it ready for Jennie Gilder to sit down 
for one of her suggestive, newsy talks, was un- 
known in my world. 

What Richard Watson Gilder did for American 
literature and art is a story that would be days in 
the telling. On his first journey to Europe, I remem- 
ber his bringing back material and pictures for the 
first article in an American magazine on Jean Fran- 
Qois Millet, whose work was soon known every- 
where. The Century in those days was first in 
everything that was fine, including golf. Living in 
Yonkers I knew about the links which John Reid, 
"the father of American golf," had laid out there, 
and I suggested to Gilder an article on the new 
game, with diagrams. For he and his associates, John- 
son and Buel, were foremost in descriptions of prac- 
tical things, as well as in things of the spirit — they 
had Frank Sprague, who built the first trolley, write 
about it, Langley on Astronomy, Professor Lowell 
on Mars, Madam Curie on Radium. The Century's 
"Story of the Captains "was the most illuminating 
contribution made to Spanish War literature. The 
Century (and the old Scribner's) sometimes found 
room for articles on inventions which were only 
dreams at the time, but which we have seen come 
true, notably Edmund Clarence Stedman's re- 

[ 142 ] 



EDMUND CLARENCE STEDMAN 

markable paper, "Aerial Navigation," printed in 
1879, with plans and diagrams which Mr. Stedman 
had drawn twenty years before. There are illustra- 
tions of dirigibles which might almost have been 
made from those we have seen in 1919. Mr. Sted- 
man may have been an amateur (he said in the 
article "We are all amateurs of something"), but 
if at the time his suggestions could have been acted 
upon, that governments with unlimited capital or a 
group of wealthy men should really concern them- 
selves with bringing about the possibilities which 
he saw so clearly, dirigibles might have been flying 
years ago. That the fish was the true model, that a 
structure could be made that could be guided upon 
a level with side vans or a screw, taking power from 
an electric engine, were his chief points, and in the 
completed airship he believed just as he believed 
"the North Pole could be reached, or the Isthmus 
of Darien cut through, if the first order of profes- 
sional talent were commanded to undertake the 
job, and equipped with every resource." And this 
great idea was conceived by Stedman, then a 
young fellow only a few years out of college (put 
out, too), while floating in a boat on Greenwood 
Lake and looking down into the clear water. The 
year was eighteen hundred and fifty-nine. 

No matter how perfect an editor may be he will 
[ 143 ] 



A GOLDEN AGE OF AUTHORS 

have some regrets. Gilder had a few — one was 
decHning what many consider Richard Harding 
Davis's best story, "Gallegher," and he never got 
over it. The magazine had been criticized for print- 
ing something that was too slangy, and Gilder (on 
a hasty reading) was afraid of Davis's office boy. 
Another declination that he regretted was Run- 
ner's exquisite poem, "The Way to Arcady," which 
was turned down because it was considered too 
long. Another magazine printed it. 

"The Letters of Richard Watson Gilder" con- 
tains a record of which any family may be proud, 
and the story of Gilder's life is told in what is prac- 
tically an autobiography and one which was writ- 
ten without any idea that the letters which compose 
it would go beyond the persons to whom they were 
sent. He tells his own story and with absolute un- 
consciousness. Through it all runs the joy which he 
took in his verse, that great gift which was a never- 
failing fountain of delight, on which he drew more 
or less through every day of his life. There was sel- 
dom a time when he had not at least one poem in 
the making. That sometimes he brought to me his 
poetry before printing or before final copying was 
to me a great pleasure, and often I would try to 
persuade him to write more smoothly, to add a 
syllable that I felt should be there, to make the ac- 

[ 144 ] 



RICHARD WATSON GILDER 

cent a little less labored. And frequently he would 
yield, but at other times he would argue it out. 
'*Why have all the lines smooth? Why not keep in 
a roughness sometimes when it makes the lines 
near seem smoother by the contrast? Don't you 
know your Browning?" I am sure that my criti- 
cisms never hurt his poetry and it is a satisfaction 
to think that sometimes they may have helped. It 
is a joy to his friends that Gilder's reputation as a 
poet is growing. Always in his verse there is beauty 
and strength — some of his subjects are ephemeral, 
but most of them are eternal. 

From a letter which he wrote to Talcott Wil- 
liams in 1900, and which he called his *' Apologia," 
I make these extracts. It is given in full in the vol- 
ume of ** Letters": 

. . . With me it [verse] has been almost exclusively a 
note from an inner pain or happiness. When the music 
(if music it is) has once taken form, the art sense goes to 
work and seeks perfection; and my feeling has been that 
lyric words should have something akin to the lyric 
tones of Schubert's Songs. Now, you see, all that comes 
from the outside to the rhymer of rhymes is just so much 
added, a gratuity of Providence; and so the words that 
come from others who have felt the same things and are 
touched, the praise of workmanship or rather of art, the 
(to me) surprising appreciation of certain philosophic 
authorities, all this is a gift of the gods to be humbly 
grateful for. . . . 

[ 145 ] 



A GOLDEN AGE OF AUTHORS 

. . . These songs have come out of the life I was lead- 
ing, the turmoil and stress and passion of moral and 
other conflict. It is not for me to give a moment's 
thought to fame, even to influence, but to do what seems 
my duty in an active world, only endeavoring that 
when the word comes it shall come as clearly and con- 
vincingly and with as much music as may be. 

This is my "Apologia"; I have no regrets. I could 
have done no otherwise. I wish my voice had had more 
power, but nothing that I could have done would have 
changed that. We have the genius with which we are 
born; the Lord of Life will not blame us for having less 
than our lofty neighbors are endowed with. 

I have the letter which Gilder sent to his asso- 
ciates on his fiftieth birthday, and as, by some 
neglect (probably because it was in a frame with a 
portrait) I did not send it to his daughter Rosa- 
mond for her book, I print it here: 

New Yorky February 8, 1894 

My dear Friends and Comrades: 

I want to thank all of you and each of you for the 
kind and brotherly send-off you gave me to-day; you 
passed me over the hne with a delicacy and tenderness 
that I deeply appreciate. I have a firm faith that age is 
relative; that is, that one is "wound up" to run a cer- 
tain length of time and may be a young man at fifty if 
he is wound up (barring accidents) to run a hundred; 
and an old man at fifty if he is wound up to run to fifty- 
one. I speak now of heredity — but environment has 
much to do with it, and I do think that in the happy 
fellowship of our work here we are all kept young to- 

[ 146 ] 



RICHARD WATSON GILDER 

gather. Our work is interesting and congenial, has na- 
tional bearings that inspire us alL and each man here is 
his brother's keeper. 

With an affectionate look backward toward those 
who are gone, and with a spirit of friendship and mutual 
helpfulness among the band that I pray God may be 
long unbroken — we can press on cheerfully in our 
work while the milestones of the years mark accomplish- 
ment and not regret. 

Always affectionately and faithfully 
R. W. Gilder 

With Gilder as editor-in-chief there never was 
any of the jealousy or friction which sometimes 
exists in publishing offices between the business de- 
partment and the editorial rooms. There are editors 
who carry their prerogatives about with them like 
the quills of a porcupine, upon which their business 
associates are forever being impaled. With Gilder 
there was always harmony; all worked together; it 
made no difference to him where a suggestion came 
from if it was a good one. Important matters like 
serials were always discussed with the business de- 
partment; in fact much of the correspondence about 
serials and the question of payment were usually 
managed by the business office — always with perfect 
cooperation in the editorial room. The yearly an- 
nouncements, the "prospectus," were written by Gil- 
der, with the help of his associates. I can remember 

[ 147] 



A GOLDEN AGE OF AUTHORS 

but one dispute that ever arose, and the reason 
of that I cannot recall. I can only remember Gil- 
der's pale face, a red spot in each cheek, and a 
real flash in his eyes. I am quite sure he was in the 
right. The foundation of his character was spirit- 
ual strength, and it was on this that his gentleness 
rested. 

. When Dr. Holland died, Roswell Smith sug- 
gested to Gilder that he should show him proofs of 
his editorials for a while, — the policy of the maga- 
zine was something that Mr. Smith, as chief owner, 
thought he should know about, — but Gilder de- 
clined absolutely. He liked to show proofs to Mr. 
Smith on his own initiative, but if Mr. Smith did 
not trust him to write editorials, if showing proof 
was a demand, his resignation was ready. Mr. 
Smith withdrew the request immediately — of 
course he trusted Gilder. 

Mr. Gilder's Friday evenings at his home in 
Fifteenth Street, a house that had been made over 
from a stable, were a feature of literary life in New 
York for many years. "To the hospitable welcome 
of this modest dwelling," wrote Will Low, "every 
one who came to New York in those days, bearing a 
passport of intellectual worth, appeared to find his 
way." What a house that was! So simple, so genuine 
— a little place to hang your hat and overcoat, 

[ 148 ] 




'NOT-TEAKS-BYT-cJOLLlTY* 



RICHARD VATSON 



0NTHE-C0nFLETI0N!5} 

OF H f 5-FORT f ETH -YEAR 

FEBRVARY- 5TH ■ I^^-^-: 

"THE-DAY-I5 OVRS'**??- 



r 



HAND5 PRESSED FOR A«^« 
'^''»*»*^»-^-^^'-«*^^^^TOKEN" 



FRONT COVER OF THE MENU OF RICHARD WATSON GILDER'S FORTIETH- YEAR 
BIRTHDAY DINNER 



RICHARD WATSON GILDER 

then a great room, always bright with sunshine 
coming through the windows cut in the big stable- 
doors, or with lamps and candles; a Saint-Gaudens 
bas-relief above the open fireplace where the kettle 
hung. They ate and lived in that big room; up- 
stairs I suppose were bedrooms, for they must have 
slept sometimes, somewhere. 

One thing that gave great pleasure to the whole 
group of young artists and literary people in my 
early days in New York was that so many who were 
friends for life started together, — Gilder, Saint- 
Gaudens, Will Low, Blashfield, Carroll Beckwith, 
Hopkinson Smith, Kenyon Cox, Drake, Frank 
Millet, H. C. Bunner, and many like them. Some 
of these men, with Mr. and Mrs. Gilder, founded the 
Society of American Artists, the first meeting of 
which was held in the studio at 103 East Fifteenth 
Street in 1877, being an immediate result of Saint- 
Gaudens having become "as mad as hops" over 
the turning-down of a piece of sculpture which he 
had sent to the Academy. 

The Friday evenings went on when the growing 
Gilder family fairly burst through the walls of the 
little studio and moved into larger and somewhat 
more conventional quarters in what was then Clin- 
ton Place; the receptions (they could hardly be 
called that) were very simple; I suppose there must 

[ 149 1 



A GOLDEN AGE OF AUTHORS 

have been "refreshments," but I cannot remember 
anything but the people. You met Paderewski and 
Madame Modjeska, Duse, Jefferson, Aus der Ohe, 
KipHng, Sargent, CeciHa Beaux — they came and 
they found something to bear away with them. 
Mrs. Gilder's idea in being at home week after 
week was "that people shall meet often and have 
something in common." Music was, of course, what 
best held them together, and such music! The in- 
spiration of many of Gilder's poems came from the 
music at these Friday evenings. 

Not all poets have a sense of humor, but Gilder 
had and it was a strong sense as may be seen in the 
volume of "Letters." Gilder and Dr. Holland were 
walking up Fifth Avenue one day many years ago, 
when Gilder did not know his New York as he 
came to know it and love it in later years. Perhaps 
he knew it, but had this joke up his sleeve. 

"What church is that.^" asked Gilder, indicat- 
ing the narrow front of the church which stands on 
the east side of the street between Forty-fifth 
and Forty-sixth Streets, the body of it inside the 
block. 

i>"The Church of the Heavenly Rest," answered 
Dr. Holland. 

"Oh," said Gilder, "and where is the *rest' of 
it.?" 

[ 150] 



RICHARD WATSON GILDER 

And he had a friendly touch. Among my papers 
is a big scrawl in his handwriting. 



Welkim 'ome! 

R.W.G. 



I found it on my desk coming back from some Euro- 
pean trip. 

One of the most enjoyable experiences of Gil- 
der's life was his close intimacy with Mr. Cleve- 
land, in the days when Mr. Cleveland occupied the 
White House and later when he became a private 
citizen, honored by his countrymen. I can remem- 
ber the day in June, 1887, when Gilder came to my 
desk and told me of the very unusual experience he 
had been having. Going to Wells College to deliver 
a commencement address he had met the young 
lady who was about to become the bride of the 
President of the United States, and had escorted 
her to Washington, and there he had been pre- 
sented to the President. 

It was the beginning of a warm friendship. The 
President, a man who knew all about politics and 
politicians, but at heart just as much of an idealist 
as Gilder, was drawn to the high-minded editor 

[151] 



A GOLDEN AGE OF AUTHORS 

and poet with bonds which tightened as the years 
went by. 

It was Gilder who brought about a meeting be- 
tween Joseph Jefferson and Grover Cleveland. He 
asked Mr. Cleveland to invite Mr. and Mrs. Jeffer- 
son to dine at the White House, which he did. Jef- 
ferson did n't want to go, — "Why should I dress 
up," he said, ''and go to the White House.^^" But 
he went, and a friendship began, based at first 
upon a mutual love of fishing, which lasted through 
their lives. In the summer at Marion the three 
men, Cleveland, Jefferson, and Gilder, were much 
together. The first two were fishermen born and 
bred, but Gilder never was exactly that. He would 
go out in a boat with the others and do his share, 
but the ecstatic joy of the fisherman was never his. 
In the evenings, around the big fireplace in the 
Gilder studio, he was at his best. 

On the completion of Gilder's fortieth year, 
February 7, 1884, we had given him a dinner. The 
front page of the menu bears two quotations from 
his poems, "Not tears but jollity" and *' Hands 
pressed for a token," with little thumb-nail pic- 
tures of his three homes — the birthplace. Belle 
Vue, Bordentown, New Jersey, the Marion house, 
and the Fifteenth Street house. On the next page 
Shakespeare is invoked with 

[ 152 ] 



'AND F ORTH 15 POET OF 0VR5 

LA5£SEL5 -AND FLOWERS " 




WHATy£-HAV£-5EEN-ANDDEEN 
HATM NOTITGROWN 
ART0F0VRVERY-5ELVE5? 






BACK COVER OF THE MENU OF RICHARD WATSON GILDER'S FORTIETH-YEAR 
BIRTHDAY DINNER 

The guests wrote their initials in the laurel leaves 



RICHARD WATSON GILDER 

"Shadows to-night 
Have struck more terror to the soul of Richard 
Than can the substance of ten thousand soldiers." 

Between the entry of each course (and there were 
many of them — shall we ever have such feasts 
again?) was a bit of Gilder's verse, from 

" 'T is of the pearly shell 
That murmurs of the far-off murmuring sea" 

with the oysters, to the ''impromptu toasts," 
"A sea this is, beware who ventureth." 
On one page are the autographs of all who were 
present. Here they are just as they signed — more 
than half of them have passed on : 

H. C. Bunner Roswell Smith 

William Carey Edmund Clarence Stedman 

W. W. Ellsworth C. C. Buel 

George Inness, Jr. Theodore L. DeVinne 

W. F. Clarke Aug. St. Gaudens 

Chas. F. Chichester A. W. Drake 

E. S. Nadal Joseph B. Gilder 

R. U. Johnson Benj. E. Smith 

Frank H. Scott W. Lewis Eraser 

Brander Matthews Henry Gallup Paine 

On the back there was a gold laurel wreath for 
Gilder's name, the initials of the guests on the 
leaves, and at the top, 

"And for this poet of ours 
Laurels and flowers." 

[ 153 ] 



A GOLDEN AGE OF AUTHORS 

I felt differently toward Gilder than toward any 
man I ever knew. I had for him an affection which 
is like the love a man has for a woman; yet there 
was nothing effeminate in his nature, he was as 
virile as a man can be, but one wanted always to 
be at his best with Gilder. He brought out all the 
good there was in his friends — and one could 
never willingly bring a shadow over those deep, 
brown eyes. 

At Mark Twain's funeral in the Brick Church I 
saw Mrs. Gilder for the first time since her hus- 
band's death. She was at the end of the pew, and 
as I stood aside to let her pass, I put out my hand, 
but she went by, with her head down. The next 
day I had a letter from her, telling me of her hus- 
band's love for me and how the thought of it had 
come over her there in the church and she knew 
she would break down if she stopped to take my 
hand and speak. I thought afterwards of how two 
men may love eacji other for a lifetime and neither 
one know it of the other, and I made up my mind 
that I would not keep such affection to myself ever 
again. 



CHAPTER X 

Augustus Saint-Gaudens 

There is another friendship which I would record 
here, one which, looking back upon it, seems to 
run side by side with my friendship for Gilder. 
And Augustus Saint-Gaudens, sculptor, and Rich- 
ard Watson Gilder, poet and editor, were them- 
selves comrades, and had been long before I knew 
either of them. It is strange how closely their lives 
fitted together, each of them striving always to 
give out the best there was in him, each serene, 
true to his ideals, never yielding a hair's breadth 
to make his work more "popular." Each greatly 
admired the other — and they were as simple as 
two school-boys. 

{ Gilder, born in 1844 and dying in 1909, had six 
years more of life than his friend, who was born in 
1848 and died in 1907. 

In the volume of Gilder "Letters" there is one 
to me written August 27, 1907, beginning: 

Rejoice with me and be exceeding glad. The Lord on 
High has let me write 

"Under the Stars 
A Requiem for Augustus Saint-Gaudens." 

[155] 



A GOLDEN AGE OF AUTHORS 

The first words came to me the night we had word of his 
death. ^ I did not tell you when I saw you, for I knew not 
what might come of it. But there it is! An ode. . . . 
Every stanza begins with an invocation to the stars, and 
it all reeks with Saint-Gaudens and his works. . . . 

I began to know Saint-Gaudens when he was 
thirty-two years old. It was in the autumn of 1880 
that I went to live in the newly opened Sherwood 
Studio Building, at the corner of Sixth Avenue and 
Fifty-seventh Street, then, as now, the ugliest 
building in the city, but out of its doors have been 
borne some of the greatest works of art that have 
been produced in New York. Only one building, 
perhaps, can surpass its record, the old Tenth 
Street Studios. At the Sherwood lived Carroll 
Beckwith, Anderson, Shurtlefl, Wyant, and many 
other artists. Saint-Gaudens occupied two of the 
studio suites, one to live in, one for his work. His 
son Homer and my son Bradford were born in the 
same month while we were in the Sherwood. 

Saint-Gaudens was a rare and beautiful soul, 
living for sculpture, yet interested in much beside, 

^ **0 kindred stars, wherethrough his soul in flight 
Passed to the immortals! 'neath your ageless light 
I stand perplexed, remembering that keen spirit 
Quenched in mid-strength; the world, that shall inherit 
His legacy of genius, all deprived 
Of wealth untold, the still ungathered fruit 
Of that great art! What honey all unhived; 
What unborn grandeurs; noble music mute! " 

[ 156 ] 



AUGUSTUS SAINT-GAUDENS 

especially in music. The Sunday afternoon con- 
certs by a string quartette, which continued for 
many years, began in his Thirty-sixth Street stu- 
dio. About forty men — worth-while men they 
were too — belonged to the little coterie which 
met in that studio weekly to hear the best cham- 
ber music that had ever been written, surrounded 
by strange shapes draped with wet cloths, plaster 
models, frames, and all the queer things that a 
sculptor brings together. 

Saint-Gaudens would work on a statue some- 
times far beyond the point where there was any 
profit left in it. John La Farge was like that with 
his windows. La Farge would smash the exquisite 
glass of a completed window unhesitatingly if the 
colors and combinations did not suit him exactly. 
Saint-Gaudens would do a statue over and over. 
He used to say that anybody could be a sculptor; 
all one had to do was to go at it and keep at it until 
the figure suited him. He was quick to act upon 
suggestions if they came from people in whom he 
had confidence, and he had probably a higher re- 
gard for the judgment of Stanford White, who 
made so many of his pedestals, than for that of any 
other man, though he and White did not always 
agree. He had great respect for his wife's opinion 
of a work of art. 

[ 157 ] 



A GOLDEN AGE OF AUTHORS 

It was Gilder who made the suggestion that the 
head of the standing Lincoln (now in Lincoln 
Park, Chicago) should be tipped forward. It hu- 
manized the figure. Originally the face looked 
straight ahead, now the eyes seem to fall upon the 
people to whom he is speaking. Many of Saint- 
Gaudens's statues have been reproduced effectively 
in small sizes. The Puritan, Diana of the Madison 
Square Garden tower, and others, but it has never 
been possible to make the standing Lincoln in a 
small size, as Mr. Saint-Gaudens wished the chair 
behind the figure to be always a part of the en- 
semble. Made small it would be a doll's chair. 

The Century's cover in two shades of brown, 
first used in the seventies under the Scribner name, 
was the design of Augustus Saint-Gaudens and 
Stanford White, and it utilized for the first time in 
modern commercial decoration the art of the 
Greeks. It is almost a copy of a design on a Greek 
tomb, and I think it stands to-day as the best 
magazine cover ever made. After using it for some 
years, more variety seemed to be demanded, and 
Elihu Vedder was asked to design four ornaments, 
to be added to the original cover at special seasons. 
Later the Vedder covers were dropped and still 
later the beautiful Saint-Gaudens-White design was 
suppressed, and the rage for variety now makes 

[ 158] 



NOVEMBER rByo 




Cover of the first number of 
Scribner's Monthly 



NOVEMBER. '38a. 



SCRIBNERS 
rAONTHLYl 
ILLVSTRATED 
AAGAZINE 



T9? CENTURY 
ILLUSTRATED 
'MONTHLY: 
14^1 N^ 




"ED-BY-J.GHOLl 
SCR'IBNER-AND-C0.743-BROADWAY-NEW-YORK 
FWARNE^C0.BEDF0RD-S T5TRANDL0ND 0N 

Cover design by Stanford White 

and Augustus Saint-Gaudens, first 

used in November, 1880 




The White-Saint-Gaudens design 
with the lettering strengthened (used 
after the change of name) and with 
the addition of a design by Elihu 
Vedder, changed at different seasons 



AUGUSTUS SAINT-GAUDENS 

every cover different from any other, as is the case 
with nearly all the magazines that blossom in red 
and blue and yellow on the news-stands of the 
land. 

Saint-Gaudens would spend years on a work if 
he felt that any improvement was possible, — ten 
years on the Sherman statue, fourteen on the Shaw 
Monument, which stands facing the Boston State 
House — the noblest high-relief that our country 
has ever seen. I remember meeting Edward Atkin- 
son of Boston in Saint-Gaudens's studio, when he 
told me that he was the only one left alive of the 
original committee formed to arrange for the relief, 
and the day of the unveiling was still in the unknown 
future. But what matters it now if the sculptor 
had spent twice fourteen years .f^ He made a mas- 
terpiece which will stand for ages, like Michelan- 
gelo's Lorenzo de' Medici.^ It seems a long time 
ago that I sat on the balcony of Delmonico's, 
then at the corner of Fifth Avenue and Twenty- 
sixth Street, and watched the ceremonies at the 
unveiling of Saint-Gaudens's noble statue of Far- 

^ In that delightful volume. The Education of Henry AdamSy one 
finds this characterization of Saint-Gaudens (p. 385) : 

"Of all the American artists who gave to American art whatever 
life it breathed in the seventies, Saint-Gaudens was perhaps the most 
sympathetic, but certainly the most inarticulate. General Grant or 
Don Cameron had scarcely less instinct of rhetoric than he. All the 
others — the Hunts, Richardson, John La Farge, Stanford White — 

[ 159 ] 



A GOLDEN AGE OF AUTHORS 

ragut across the avenue in Madison Square. It 
was a never-to-be-forgotten scene, an afternoon of 
bright sunshine in May (the year 1881); sailors 
grouped around the pedestal, cannon in the back- 
ground; Joseph H. Choate, orator of the day, at 
his very best; and the flag falling to disclose the 
splendid bronze figure of the admiral, his feet apart 
and really standing on a deck — the greatest work 
of art that had been produced by an American, and 
that American our own dear friend. It established 
the reputation of Saint-Gaudens at once as the 
leading American sculptor, a reputation that was 
his through life and which is still his. 

I contributed to the Saint-Gaudens "Reminis- 
cences" a story which perhaps I may repeat here: 
Walking home one night from one of Gilder's Fri- 
day evenings with Mr. and Mrs. Saint-Gaudens 
soon after the unveiling of the Farragut statue, as 
we approached it we saw an elderly man, his hat 

were exuberant; only Saint-Gaudens could never discuss or dilate 
on an emotion, or suggest artistic arguments for giving to his work 
the forms that he felt. He never laid down the law, or affected the 
despot, or became brutalized like Whistler by the brutalities of the 
world. He required no incense; he was no egoist; his simplicity of 
thought was excessive, he could not imitate, or give any form but 
his own to the creations of his hand. No one felt more strongly than 
he the strength of other men, but the idea that they could affect 
him never stirred an image in his mind. ... In mere time he was a 
lost soul that had strayed by chance into the twentieth century . . . 
a child of Benvenuto Cellini, smothered in an American cradle.'* 

[ 160] 



AUGUSTUS SAINT-GAUDENS 

off, standing motionless in the moonlight, looking 
up at the figure. 

"It's father," whispered Saint-Gaudens in sur- 
prise, for the old man had always been reluctant to 
notice his son's work. 

"Why, father," he said, hoping for the long- 
deferred word of approval, "what are you doing 
here at this hour?" 

"Oh, you go about your business! Have n't I a 
right to be here?" was the gruff response. 

He kept a little shoe-shop on Fourth Avenue near 
by, where the Metropolitan Life Building stands 
to-day (and before that the Lyceum Theater), 
with the sign " Cordonnier pour dames'' over the 
door, and he had come out in the night to see the 
work of his son, whose humble savings he had 
treasured so many years for the journey to the 
ateliers of Paris. But praise was another story. 

It was a great privilege in later years to help 
Homer Saint-Gaudens plan the book of his father's 
reminiscences, and to be one of its publishers. As I 
write these lines the two young men, Homer and 
my son, are captains, fighting in France. Homer is 
in charge of a camouflage company, for which his 
inherited artistic ability and his stage experience 
with Charles Frohman especially fit him. 

A close friend of Saint-Gaudens in the early New 
[ 161 ] 



A GOLDEN AGE OF AUTHORS 

York days was Joseph M. Wells, a young architect 
in the office of McKim, Mead & White, a man of 
striking ability and taste, who had been invited, 
just before his death, to join that famous firm. I 
remember once asking Mead what he himself did 
in it. "It takes all of my time keeping my part- 
ners from making damn fools of themselves," was 
the reply. There are drawbacks to genius. 

Wells was the inspirer of the Sunday concerts, 
and after Saint-Gaudens was obliged to give up 
having the concerts regularly in his studio by rea- 
son of the trouble involved in making ready, he 
had one yearly in memory of Wells. Homer Saint- 
Gaudens, in his book of reminiscences, says that 
the Villard residence on Madison Avenue and the 
home of the Century Association in West Forty- 
third Street, were two of the many buildings which 
Wells designed. 

When our company moved to Union Square, it 
was Wells who looked after the decorations. The 
richly carved mantel in the business office, bear- 
ing the company's seal, the open book on the 
palette, with the rays behind, was designed by 
Stanford White. Another mantel was the work of 
Allegra Eggleston, Dr. Eggleston's daughter; it 
was for Gilder's room, which was to have been Dr. 
Holland's, who died just as we were moving in. It 

[ 162 ] 






kOtA-»Ujt-X-<_ 










A PORTRAIT SKETCH OF AUGUSTUS SAINT-GAUDENS MADE IN A 
VISITORS' BOOK 

Note the "August 9th, no 11th" 



THE CENTURY OFFICES 

became a memorial to Dr. Holland, a bas-relief of 
his face in the upper panel, surrounded with sprays 
of bitter-sweet, a memory of his most familiar 
poem. 

With the benefit of Wells's taste, Stanford White 
to look in occasionally, and Drake always on the 
spot, the office became a thing of beauty of which 
the workers never tired and in which they were 
daily refreshed. Men are inclined to put all of their 
taste and money on the fittings of a home, but why 
not consider a little more the office or the shop 
where the owner as well as the wage-earner spends 
most of his waking time.^^ 

The cost of making The Century offices was not 
great — it was only a matter of planning gener- 
ous spaces and putting the right color into the 
walls. The most interesting and the most cherished 
originals of the illustrations which had appeared in 
the magazines were hung everywhere, and changed 
from time to time. In the long corridor which led 
to the editorial rooms were the originals, in color, 
of many of the pictures which had beautified 
Sloane's "Napoleon." 

From my desk near the front windows I have 
watched Gilder go down that corridor thousands 
of times, with his quick step, his head thrown a 
little forward, always bearing a bag of manu- 

[ 163 1 



A GOLDEN AGE OF AUTHORS 

scripts; and Drake too, and Eraser, and Benjamin 
Smith of the Dictionary staff, for whom I had a 
great affection, and Mrs. Dodge, and others who 
did such good work in life and were so happy in it; 
— as Gilder once wrote of those who had gone, 
"all present if in love and honor." 



CHAPTER XI 

Can novels be cheaper ? — The cost of a hook — Advertising hooks — 
Harold Bell Wright and some "best sellers'' — How he does it — 
Publishers* troubles 

I WISH new novels could be published and sold for 
fifty cents, but I have never been able to see how 
it could be done. The present system in America is 
to charge usually a dollar thirty-five to a dollar 
and a half (often much more during and since the 
war), and then, if successful, after two years to 
bring it out at fifty cents (now seventy-five). In 
Continental Europe books are issued usually in 
the cheaper form first, but there public libraries 
are unknown, and if people want books at all they 
must buy them. Here an enormous number of peo- 
ple get all their reading from the libraries, and it is 
doubtful if the sale of the average new novel would 
be much more at fifty cents than it is at a dollar 
thirty-five, and unless it were many times as much 
it would not pay; the author would not be satisfied 
and the publisher could not pay his manufacturing 
and advertising bills. 

The actual cost of making a book is really a very 
small part of what the buyer pays for it. Here are 
the figures (compiled since the war) of an average 

[165 ] 



A GOLDEN AGE OF AUTHORS 

novel, sold at $1.50: the jobber, to whom many of 
the books are sold, and who supplies the trade, 
buys it at a discount of about forty per cent; that 
takes off sixty cents, leaving the publisher ninety 
cents. The jobber needs all of that forty per cent 
discount in his business. If the publisher spends 
ten cents a copy in advertising (and that is only 
five hundred dollars on a sale of five thousand cop- 
ies or a thousand dollars on a sale of ten thousand) 
his receipts come down to eighty cents. The author 
may receive fifteen per cent of the retail price, 
though if his books are sure of a large sale, he gets 
twenty; but if fifteen, we'll deduct twenty-two and 
a half cents, fifteen per cent of one dollar fifty, for 
the author. This leaves the publisher fifty-seven 
and one half cents. The book costs him to manu- 
facture, at present prices of paper, printing, and 
binding, about thirty cents. Now, he is down to 
twenty-seven and a half cents ; the plates may cost 
five cents a copy — sometimes it is less and often 
it is much more. This leaves the publisher twenty- 
two and one half cents for himself; and out of this 
he must pay all of his general expenses, salaries, 
rents, insurance, bad debts, overhead charges of 
every kind; and what is left to him in the way of 
profit is usually much less than ten per cent on the 
retail price of the book. And that is only when it 

[ 166 ] 



OLIVER HERFORD 

A 

is successful. In many cases the publisher makes 
nothing at all and sometimes publishes a book at a 
loss — but the author has always his royalty. If 
that royalty is twenty per cent, which is thirty 
cents on a dollar-fifty novel, the publisher can 
make a profit only if the book has a very large sale, 
which will reduce the cost per copy of plates, man- 
ufacture, and advertising. If he sells only three 
thousand copies he had better not have published 
the book at all — there may be a small profit on 
four thousand if one has not spent too much in ad- 
vertising. 

These figures may perhaps account for the fact 
that there is no such thing as a rich publisher. And 
that reminds me of Oliver Herford. He once asked 
a member of our firm for an increased royalty and a 
larger advance. Solemnly he was told of the great 
expenses connected with making a book — the 
plates, the advertising, the long wait for returns, 
etc. "Say no more," interrupted Herford; *'I re- 
linquish all royalty and give up the advance — 
just let me have one share of the stock of your 
poor, unfortunate company." 

No one has ever found the sure way to advertise 
a book. The manufacturer of cotton cloth knows 
that scores of other factories are turning out cotton 

[ 167] 



A GOLDEN AGE OF AUTHORS 

cloth which no purchaser can tell from his, but the 
pubhsher of ''Hugh Wynne" or "The Turmoil" is 
secure in the knowledge that no one else, thanks to 
copyright laws, can give the world those particular 
books. But how much can he afford to spend in 
pushing them? The manufacturer of soap or can- 
dles or breakfast food has a decided advantage in 
the matter of advertising; — he can think of the 
future — the publisher has only the present to 
consider. If a man likes a special kind of soap he 
will get another cake next month, and later his 
wife will order a box from the grocer, and his chil- 
dren will grow up and go out into the world and 
wash off its grime with that particular soap; but, 
alas for the maker of "Hugh Wynne" and "The 
Turmoil." Of each of these one cake will suffice. 
The reader of "Hugh Wynne" doesn't go forth 
and buy another copy as soon as he has read the 
first; in fact, that is the last thing he does. He is 
through with "Hugh Wynne" forever, and he 
turns to another book, an entirely fresh one, prob- 
ably born in. &e brain of another writer and turned 
out from the factory of another publisher. For he 
is not even impressed by the publisher's name (al- 
though one publisher is now seeking to impress 

him by advertising "These are books" — 

good luck to the experiment!); the reader does n't 

[ 168] 



ADVERTISING BOOKS 

say, as he lays down "Hugh Wynne," "Give me 
The Century Company's books or none," and, 
more's the pity, he may hke his "Hugh Wynne" 
enough to lend it to a neighbor and that neighbor 
to another, and so on, each kindly lender killing a 
possible sale. A law making it obligatory to destroy 
every book after reading would help a publisher 
more than international copyright. 

One great asset the publisher has, — virtually, 
alone of all manufacturers, — he creates a com- 
modity that the newspapers will talk about. 
"Alas," says a friend of mine who makes collars, 
"why may I not send two hundred boxes of my 
latest collars to two hundred editors with the 
knowledge that each of them will give me from five 
inches to a column of free descriptive advertising 
as they give your books? Why will they not print 
the personal item that the inventor of my best shape 
in turnover fronts, two inches high in the back, will 
spend the summer camping on the Yukon?" And 
my collar friend says truly that the number of men 
who read new books is infinitesimal in comparison 
with those who put on a clean collar every morn- 
ing, and like to try a new shape now and then. 

There are a few "best sellers" in these days, but 
nothing in our time has equaled the success of the 

[ 169] 



A GOLDEN AGE OF AUTHORS 

novels of Harold Bell Wright and Gene Stratton 
Porter. Seven million of each author! Think of it! 
An article in a recent number of The Bookman 
contains an interview with Mr. Wright, and what 
he has to say will be a revelation to many authors. 
He tells just how the trick is turned. 

In a big khaki-colored tent with celluloid win- 
dows, on an exposed headland, overlooking the 
valley which contains Tucson, Arizona, the works 
of Harold Bell Wright are created. 

First he writes a complete "argument," the 
character of the book, its vital principles, destruc- 
tive agencies, appeal of sex, motif of story, etc. He 
says the purpose of this novel ("When a Man's a 
Man" is on the ways) shall be "to arouse and fos- 
ter the instinctive regard for the essential qualities 
or characteristics of manhood as such; to warn 
against the over-emphasis placed upon pursuits 
and achievements of a purely intellectual nature in 
so far as these pursuits and achievements ignore the 
distinctive character of manhood"; and so on. Mr. 
Wright admits that the argument is for himself and 
is not in the style he would have employed if he had 
intended it for the public. 

No plot yet, no scenes, nothing but the argu- 
ment, "the heart and soul of the novel." It may 
prove to be a sea-tale or a story of the plains. Mr. 

[ 170 ] 



HAROLD BELL WRIGHT 

Wright admits that the plains would probably win 
out, as he knows nothing of the sea. "Next come 
the characters, each one standing for some element 
or factor in the argument. Up to the last copying 
of 'The Eyes of the World,' not a character had 
been named. They were called in the copy. Greed, 
Ambition, Youth, or whatever they represented in 
the writing of the story." 

Each character is given a history card, covering 
his life, "beginning before his birth" and running 
up to his appearance in the story. "Something in 
his history or nature must account for his every 
action in the story." The germ of the plot lies 
somewhere among these characters — it is not an 
inspiration but a logical growth. "The plot never 
is the reason for the story." 

The plot assumes form as the writer gets ac- 
quainted with his created characters; the various 
persons, with their different ways and views, sug- 
gest the beginning of a still unformed plot; if inci- 
dents intrude he makes notes. Next comes the con- 
struction; he lays out four divisions, as he feels 
that every well-built novel must be divided into 
four parts. ("Our Mutual Friend" is in four parts 
— I think the only one of Dickens's novels so ar- 
ranged.) Each division card leads its squad on a 
screen where he works on them. Construction 

[ 171 ] 



A GOLDEN AGE OF AUTHORS 

takes about three months, and for it he goes to the 
country where the scene is laid. 

From a pack which held one hundred and fifty- 
construction cards the author drew one. This is a 
copy of it: 

ACl 

Patches Mystery of identity and history 

" Cowboy education 

" Question of relation to thieves 
Time — Sept Oct Fall rodeo 
13 

Patches — Suspicion as thief begins 
Results from Reed's general suspicion N 

" " Mystery of identity and history 
Note — Reed against and Uncle Bill for Patches. 
14 

pi ., > Friendship developing 

Results from Patches proving his manhood 
" " Patches regard for manhood 

15 

Kitty (Patches) 

Interest in him developing 

Results from Patches character (hints of city life) 
" " Kitty's interest in city life 
** ^ In Friendship of Patches and Kitty 

The cards are written in various colored inks and 
pencils. "That gives emphasis to the different 
notes." Mr. Wright then puts his cards on a great 
screen, about seven feet by seven, built of two 

[ 172 ] 



HAROLD BELL WRIGHT 

by four scantlings, covered with burlap; it holds 
ninety cards, six rows of fifteen each. 

When the above card was written Mr. Wright 
was not sure of a single incident. The insertion of 
incidents is the stage now reached. He attaches the 
notes to the construction card with wire clips. In- 
cidents have occurred to him; one may go in A D 2 
or later be moved down to C A 4. He subjects them 
to acid tests as to intrinsic interest, value as to car- 
rying on the theme, accord with the plot, in keep- 
ing with the characters. Sometimes he has enough 
incidents left over to fill another novel. No text is 
written yet. 

''Then when the construction work is done," he 
says, "I turn to and write the thing. It is easy 
then. . . . That's all there is to writing a novel." 

If I have not reported this with sufficient full- 
ness to enable the reader to prepare his argument, 
arrange his cards, and write a novel, he can find 
complete directions in The Bookman for July, 
1918. It would be advisable to consult it because it 
is not unlikely that the present writer in his efforts 
at condensation has omitted some important de- 
tail, the carrying-out of which is essential lest the 
whole structure fall to the ground. "'You're noth- 
ing but a pack of cards! ' said Alice." 

Surely Harold Bell Wright has found the secret 
[ 173] 



A GOLDEN AGE OF AUTHORS 

of constructing a novel which vast numbers of his 
fellow men and women can enjoy, while no profes- 
sor of English literature can stand having one in 
his house. It is said that a certain confirmed littera- 
teur once took a copy away from his cook and 
burned it in the stove before her eyes. He brought 
her "Tom Jones," and "Clarissa Harlowe." "For 
God's sake, read something with meat on its 
bones!" 

But publishers think that the business manage- 
ment of Harold Bell Wright's books has had as 
much to do with their success as the burlap screen 
and the cards. The head of the house which issues 
these (and no other) novels believes that Mr. 
Wright's works interest a greater number of Amer- 
ican people than the works of any other writer; 
that is, that Mr. Wright is the high apostle of the 
commonplace, and that the aggressive purity of 
his output is bound to satisfy the taste for senti- 
mentalism to a degree that is unsurpassed by any 
author, living or dead. The publisher has backed 
Mr. Wright as no writer has been backed before. 
He has printed hundreds of thousands of copies 
before issue, beginning to talk in loud tones a year 
in advance of the unprecedented size of the edition 
which he is about to bring forth, taking costly ad- 
vertising pages in the periodicals, spending, it is 

[ 174 ] 



BEST SELLERS 

said, a hundred thousand dollars before the book 
appears — ah, what a greasing of the ways is that ! 
A first edition of 250,000 copies of one book will be 
surpassed by 500,000 of the next and overwhelmed 
by 750,000 of a third. Jobbers buy in lots of 50,000 
and 100,000. An expectant world is waiting, and 
bang! comes one of the immortal works in four di- 
visions, every character typifying a human trait, 
each incident tending in the right direction, virtue 
triumphant, vice under foot. "Come, children, let 
us shut up the box and the puppets, for our play 
is played out." That ending of '* Vanity Fair" al- 
ways has saddened me, for never was there a book 
whose characters seemed less like puppets. Per- 
haps it could be more appropriately used by Mr. 
Wright. 

All the profits of the dollar-fifty edition are some- 
times spent in advertising, the publisher being well 
satisfied with what accrues from the tremendous 
after sales of the reprint at a lower price. 

Authors should follow Mr. Wright in one par- 
ticular and keep to a single publisher, not placing 
their books around with different houses simply 
because they can get a little more advance or a 
trifle larger royalty. If several publishers have a 
writer's books, no one publisher is interested in 

[ 175 ] 



A GOLDEN AGE OF AUTHORS 

that writer per se. The publisher wants the writer 
and all his works, not simply a passing book. 

And authors are sometimes on the watch against 
what they believe to be a publisher's prejudice 
against their particular book. They can't find a 
copy in local bookstores or there are none to be 
seen on the railway news-stands. Every publisher 
does what he can to sell every book on his list, but 
his salesmen cannot always make a dealer purchase 
them. That dealer may have had too many, per- 
haps, of an author's previous book and so decline 
to take any risks on another. The people who man- 
age railway bookstalls want only quick-sellers, and 
they are apt to want these "on sale," that is, not 
to be paid for unless sold, and older publishers have 
found from experience that "on sale" books often 
come back in such shape that it is impossible to 
offer them again without rebinding, and that the 
profit on five hundred books sold does not make up 
for the loss on two thousand returned. The author 
would like the five hundred sold because on these 
he gets a royalty, and he has no interest whatever 
in the two thousand returned. But the publisher 
must do the best he can for his business and for the 
author in the long run. Trust him; if you cannot 
trust him, get another; but as long as you stay 
with him, believe in him. 

[ 176] 



PUBLISHERS' TROUBLES 

The publisher has his troubles. Here is a letter 
from a man in Colorado, who was not satisfied 
with the treatment which his mining town re- 
ceived in The Century Cyclopedia of Names : 



May 4, 1895 
The Century Co. 

Messieurs : 

Some time ago one of your agents unloaded your 
Cyclopedia of Names on me with the assurance that it 
was a way up and modern publication. I have received 
the book and don't agree with him, for the reason that 
while such Jim Crow and tin-horn towns as Abilene, 
Kansas, and Grinnell, Iowa, are mentioned in the work 

I fail to find any reference to this city or district of . 

Consequently I am disgust with the book and although 
have put up $2.00 to bind the sale would as soon let that 
go and not own such a book which is so lacking as to 
omit any reference to this city or district. Now then for 
the benefit of your compiler I want to say for the in- 
formation of his jags that the city and mining district of 

are located on the slope of . Four years 

ago the population was about ten. To-day the souls in- 
habiting the citij of number at least ten thousand 

and in the entire district there are at least twenty thou- 
sand souls not counting about five hundred coyotes in 
human shape who are in the chattel mortgage business 
and consequently don't trot in the soul's class. 

The Rio Grande and Santa Fe roads are completed 
into the camp and his jags is further informed that as a 
slight indication of the importance of this camp as a 
wealth producer that one mine known as the , and 

[ 177 ] 



A GOLDEN AGE OF AUTHORS 

it is dam well named, produced over half a million dol- 
lars profit for the four months just gone for the lucky 

cuss who owns it to wit, old man , who has just 

gone in a special Pullman to California. Then the 

is producing at the rate of a million a year. Recollect 
this is a gold camp strictly and produces no silver and I 
don't see why the hell your statistick prospector omitted 

to mention the great camp of which lies on the 

side of and not on the side of the range 

which was prospected by suckers for forty years. 

It strikes me as dam curious that this camp which 
will positively produce more gold in 1895 than can be 
produced in all California should get lost in the shuffie 
by your compiler. You may doubt these figures but if 
you do it will be because you are not posted. No I don't 

want the book since it don't mention and your 

agent can take the $2.00 as his rake-off and take his 
little book back. 

I am sorry to have to do this because have always 
considered your house a good one but am compelled 
to say that in my honest opinion your compiler is not 
well onto his job, in fact he aint worth a dam. Let me 
hear from you by return mail what you propose to do 
about it. 

Yours sincerely 



It was quite true that the name of the town was 
not in the first edition of the book, but as that edi- 
tion had been planned and set up several years be- 
fore, and as the man himself had said that "four 
years ago the population was about ten," our edi- 
tors did not take the criticism seriously to heart. 

[ 178 ] 



PUBLISHERS' TROUBLES 

All letters which come to publishers are not as 
clear and convincing as the last. The following, 
not written by a "Babu" as one might imagine, 
but signed with an Irish name, was filed with ''ap- 
plications for positions," though it is not at all cer- 
tain that it belongs there: 

— East Street, New York 

August Isty 1911 

The Century Co. 

Gentlemen: 

I find myself gripped with so exceptional a propen- 
sity to master an authentic method of converting psy- 
chological summary to prosaic material. 

In consequence I venture to solicit your kind interest 
in probable prospect of securing a humble capacity in an 
initiative view of eventual mingling and associated in- 
terest in the finished article or data. 

Twenty-three of age, a Christian, and student of men- 
tal evolution, non-hyperbolic or playing, and concen- 
trative in the ultra. 

I am, 

Hopefully, 

John 0'— — 



CHAPTER XII 

"Discovering^* authors — Alice Began Bice — "Frances Little" — 
Editors' and publishers'* mistakes — Mr. Alden and Amelie Rives — 
George Ripley and "Ben Hur'' — "David Harum" — Mary E. 
Wilkins — Dr. Mitchell and "Hugh Wynne" — Winston Churchill 
— Paul Leicester Ford — Charles D. Stewart 

It is always pleasant to "discover" an author. 
Joseph B. Gilder, when in charge of our book de- 
partment, *' discovered" Alice Hegan, afterward 
Mrs. Alice Hegan Rice and her book, "Mrs. Wiggs 
of the Cabbage Patch." Douglas Z. Doty, when in 
the same position in later years, "discovered" 
Jean Webster. 

"Mrs. Wiggs of the Cabbage Patch" had been 
declined by one publisher because he considered 
that its thirty-jBve thousand words were not 
enough to make a book, but, thanks to Mr. Joseph 
Gilder, we believed in it and took it, and by reason 
of its size published it at one dollar, and "Mrs. 
Wiggs" became the first of a series of dollar books, 
which afterward included "The Lady of the Deco- 
ration," "Uncle William," "Daddy Long-Legs," 
"Molly-Make-Believe," and other notable suc- 
cesses. I remember when Miss Hegan called at the 
oflSce to make the acquaintance of the publishers 

[ 180 ] 



ALICE HEGAN RICE 

who had just accepted her Httle manuscript. She 
told us of her interest in work among the needy in 
her home city of Louisville, and how "Mrs. Wiggs" 
had grown out of her own experiences. 

In September, 1901, the book was issued in a 
modest edition of 2000 copies. The next month 
2000 more were printed, and twice in December it 
became necessary to print editions of 2000 each. 
Then a surprising thing happened; in January, a 
month which publishers devote usually to count- 
ing up how many books they did n't sell in the 
previous year — in January it became necessary 
to print 5000, in February 10,000, and other ten 
thousands in March, April, and May, and 30,000 
in August, and from September to January, 95,000 
more. And the year after was still better — oh, 
"Mrs. Wiggs" was a joy to its publishers! Its 
cheerful message has been translated into French 
and German and Dutch, into Swedish and Danish 
and Japanese, and has been put into type for the 
blind. A very successful play was made of it, with 
half a dozen companies on the road, and the author 
herself, traveling in India, after a Christmas morn- 
ing on the Ganges, looked up to see on a bill-board 
the announcement that "Mrs. Wiggs," played by 
an English company, would be the feature of the 
Benares theater that evening. 

[ 181 ] 



A GOLDEN AGE OF AUTHORS 

"The Lady of the Decoration," written by 
*' Frances Little" (Mrs. Macauley), a relative of 
Mrs. Rice, was another success. We had the feeling 
that perhaps because it was written in the form of 
letters it might not take with the public, and we 
feared that the missionaries would not like its allu- 
sions to them. But we could n't supply the mission- 
ary boards fast enough, and we printed it over and 
over again. Books written in the form of letters will 
take if they are clever enough; "The Lady of the 
Decoration" was followed long after by two very 
popular books made up of letters, "Daddy Long- 
Legs" and "Dear Enemy," by Jean Webster of 
beloved memory. 

Jean Webster was a daughter of Charles L. Web- 
ster the publisher, Mark Twain's nephew. She 
was a Vassar girl and her first stories were stories 
of Vassar life. Mr. Doty helped her to arrange the 
stories in "When Patty Went to College," suggest- 
ing that they be rewritten in places, helped her as 
so many editors and publishers have helped authors 
with a first book and often with others. From the 
beginning all of her books of this class have been 
very successful. Jean Webster was a woman of 
great charm and earnestness, desirous of doing 
good work, always faithful to her publishers. One 
of my most cherished possessions is her photo- 

[ 182 ] 




V^A«.-Aje>] fc. 






!^ \V 



JEAN WEBSTER 

graph, with **To my favorite pubhsher" written 
beneath it. The interest which Jean Webster (Mrs. 
Glenn Ford McKinney) took in orphaned children, 
begun by her studies for "Daddy Long-Legs," 
made her an expert on the subject and she had 
many plans for helping them when death took her, 
and she gave her life for a little child. 

Editors and publishers make mistakes. I have 
already spoken of Gilder's declining what many 
consider Richard Harding Davis's best story, 
"Gallegher." In "The House of Harper" there is 
printed a letter which Mr. Alden, editor of Har- 
per's Magazine, once wrote to Amelie Rives telling 
her of his regret in having declined a story of hers 
when he came to read it in another magazine, and 
he said it was one of only two such cases in his ex- 
perience, the other a story by Rose Terry Cooke. 
"The editorial habit," Mr. Alden went on, "leads 
to over-caution. In nine hundred and ninety-nine 
cases out of a thousand the caution is wise. An edi- 
tor too readily reasons from precedents, and when 
the unprecedented is presented to his mind he is 
hkely at first to be bewildered." A few years ago, 
he said, "Blackmore's *Lorna Doone' presented a 
somewhat similar case. It at first so bewildered 
criticism that a long time elapsed before it was ap- 

[ 183 ] 



A GOLDEN AGE OF AUTHORS 

preciated in England or thought worthy of reprint- 
ing in America. Now it is recognized as the greatest 
romance of modern Hterature, standing entirely 
alone." And, it may be added, only the marriage of 
the Princess Louise and the Marquis of Lome 
started the book at all. The English pubhc asso- 
ciated its name with that of the much-talked-of 
marquis, and it began to sell. The wrath of the 
author, Blackmore, over this roundabout apprecia- 
tion is still a classic in the annals of authorship. . 
It is interesting to go back and see what a pub- 
lisher's reader had to say about a book that later 
became a very great success. George Ripley, than 
whom there was no more highly esteemed critic, read 
the manuscript of "Ben Hur"and reported on it 
to Harper & Bros. Mr. Ripley said: "It is a bold, 
imaginative experiment. ... I do not regard it, 
either in the selection of theme or the style of exe- 
cution, as belonging to classical or even legitimate 
literature, and if it were the production of a new 
and unknown writer I could not bring myself to rec- 
ommend its publication. But with the prestige of the 
author and his really uncommon gifts of invention 
and illustration, together with the features of popu- 
lar interest that would give it a wonderful fascina- 
tion among the multitude of readers, I think it 
might be well to accept the manuscript." 

[ 184 ] , 



BEST SELLERS 

And ^*Ben Hur" has sold somewhere around 
two million copies. The play which was made from 
it had been presented 5446 times up to December, 
1916, when it was temporarily withdrawn, and, in 
its seventeen years, more than eleven million people 
had paid into the box office seven and a half million 
dollars to see it. But if the manuscript of "Ben Hur " 
had been sent in by a new author it would have had 
hard sledding. Surely the new author who has had 
a book declined may take heart from this.^ 

As is well known "David Harum" was offered 
to half a dozen publishers (I am glad to say that 
The Century Company was not one of them; I 
should hate to have had such a seller as "David 
Harum" slip through our jBngers) before Ripley 
Hitchcock, the Appletons' literary adviser, saw 
something in it. Hitchcock told me that the manu- 
script was nearly a foot high when it came to him. 

* When we were making The Century Cyclopedia of Names I 
wrote to General Lew Wallace to ask about his name, whether it was 
Lew or Lewis. Here is his answer: 

Crawfordsville, Ind. 

July 6, *95 
Dear Sm: 

You are right. My name is Lewis, tho' Lew., being an abbreviation 
or nickname derived from school associates, is continued for con- 
venience. 

Respectfully 

Lew Wallace 
Mr. Ellsworth 

[185] 



A GOLDEN AGE OF AUTHORS 

'* David Harum" was its author's first book and 
very badly constructed; David, the only real char- 
acter in it, did not enter until the story was far 
along. Hitchcock took the horse story out of the 
middle and made it chapter one, and the reader 
was interested from the first. It is sad to think 
that "David Harum," tremendous seller that it 
was, did not appear in the author's lifetime. 

A good editor or a good publisher ought to be 
suggestive and able sometimes to give authors 
ideas that are valuable. I remember long ago read- 
ing in a Sunday Tribune a paragraph which seemed 
to me just made for a story by Miss Mary E. 
Wilkins (now Mrs. Freeman). I sent it to her. It 
told of a mother and daughter who came to New 
York, put up at the Fifth Avenue Hotel, and the 
daughter gave the clerk a thousand dollars, telling 
him to let her know when it was nearly exhausted 
by board and bills. The two ladies had a wonder- 
ful shopping season, buying clothes and jewelry 
galore, and the clerk happened to let the account 
go until more than the thousand had been spent. 
Then when he asked the girl to put up more money, 
she broke down and wept. She had no more — the 
thousand dollars was insurance money which had 
been paid on her father's death. She had never had 
a good time in her life, nor spent any money, and 

I 186 ] 



MARY E. WILKINS 

she had persuaded her mother to carry out this one 
grand carouse. The hotel had to send them back 
to Vermont. 

Miss Wilkins was very grateful; she made a fine 
story out of it — and sent it, by the way, to an- 
other magazine. It appeared under the title ''One 
Good Time." She built up the life in Vermont be- 
fore the father's death, his meanness, the daily 
toil, the final determination. Not much space was 
given to the New York trip, presumably true. 

Months after I heard again from Miss Wilkins, 
Visiting New York she had called at the Fifth Av- 
enue Hotel to learn more particulars, only to find 
that the original story was entirely the fabrication 
of a reporter, without any basis of fact whatever. 
So I had unconsciously put Miss Wilkins into the 
position of using another person's imagined plot! 
Her gratitude undoubtedly waned, but she was 
very polite about it. 

Dr. Mitchell very kindly regarded me as the 
"discoverer" of "Hugh Wynne," but I was not 
exactly that. He sent a resume of the story to Gil- 
der, suggesting its consideration as a serial; but 
Gilder read no more than the resume; he had en- 
gaged a serial for the coming year and could not 
use "Hugh Wynne." Two other editors had the 
same chance and turned it down. We were the pub- 

[ 187] 



A GOLDEN AGE OF AUTHORS 

lisliers of Dr. Mitchell's books and as "Hugh 
Wynne" was not to be serialized, the manuscript 
was sent to the manufacturing department, set up 
and five thousand copies of the book printed. By 
some strange accident nobody read it. There had 
been a good deal of talk about it in the oflSce, and 
the business department supposed the magazine 
editors had read it. 

Going to the country one Saturday afternoon in 
the summer I took with me a set of the sheets of 
"Hugh Wynne," then on its way to the bindery. I 
shall never forget my sensation that Saturday and 
Sunday. The joy of a publisher's or an editor's life 
is discovery. I went back to New York Monday 
morning wild-eyed and excited. "Fellows, we've 
got the best novel of the American Revolution that 
ever was written." Gilder read it, they all read it, 
and we arranged to carry over the serial that we 
had engaged and "Hugh Wynne" took its place. 
The five thousand copies that we had printed were 
boxed up and put away, and when we came to 
issue a year later we needed at least twenty thou- 
sand more to fill the advance orders. If any one has 
the idea that serial publication may injure the sale 
of a book, let him know that serial publication is a 
very great help to a good book — and a quick and 
painless death to a poor one. 

[ 188 ] 



DR. S. WEIR MITCHELL 

In the days of "Hugh Wynne" and of "Janice 
Meredith" there was great interest in American 
history, especially the history of the American 
Revolution, and these books satisfied that inter- 
est. The only other book by Dr. Mitchell which 
approached the sale of "Hugh Wynne" was "The 
Red City," also historical. Dr. Mitchell was not 
what publishers call a great "seller," but in all, up 
to January, 1913, nearly five hundred thousand 
copies of his novels had been sold, about one quar- 
ter of the whole being "Hugh Wynne." 

A few weeks after the publication of that book a 
man called at the office bringing a copy of a novel 
entitled, "The Quaker Soldier," written, as I re- 
member, by Judge ZoUicoffer of Philadelphia, and 
published between 1850 and 1860, asking us if we 
did not think Dr. Mitchell had taken the idea of 
his story from that book. The plot bore some re- 
semblance to that of "Hugh Wynne" — the hero 
was an officer on Washington's staff and he had a 
cousin in the British army, and there was a some- 
what similar love interest (as I remember the book 
at this distance). But Dr. Mitchell said that he had 
never heard of "The Quaker Soldier." I thought at 
the time that it was not impossible that Dr. Mitch- 
ell had read the book, perhaps in his boyhood, and 
that the memory of the plot had been laid away in 

[ 189 ] 



A GOLDEN AGE OF AUTHORS 

some corner of his brain and forgotten until such 
time as he began work on "Hugh Wynne," when 
unconsciously he used a shadow of it supposing 
that it was all his own. But it may have been 
merely a coincidence. 

One way of pushing a book is by letting people 
know that there are characters in it which have a 
special interest for them. As I recall the number, 
there were twenty-eight Philadelphia families rep- 
resented in "Hugh Wynne" by ancestors living in 
Revolutionary days, and we did what we could to 
let the many more than twenty-eight descendants 
know of this. The book lent itself, too, to extra 
illustration, the insertion of portraits, contempo- 
raneous prints and manuscripts, and we issued a 
hundred copies of a large-paper edition for collec- 
tors. 

Dr. Mitchell was a hard worker, writing a great 
number of authoritative medical books as well as 
novels. Of the latter he might have produced more 
had not his fellow physician, Dr. Holmes, long ago 
advised him to give up trying to do anything out- 
side of his own profession — advice which kept 
him back for many years. He asked a good price for 
prose, never taking money for a poem — poetry, 
he said, was too near his heart. He worked at his 
profession all winter, taking a month off in June 

[ 190] 




DR. S. WEIR MITCHELL AT MOUNT DESERT 



DR. S. WEIR MITCHELL 

for salmon fishing in Canada (one recalls the mon- 
sters of the deep which used to arrive, packed in 
ice, at the office in Dr. Mitchell's fishing season), 
then gave the summer to writing at his home in 
Bar Harbor. Like some other wise men he believed 
that the best vacation was a change of work. 

For some unknown reason if a person wins fame 
in any other walk of life and writes besides, he is 
apt to be regarded as an "amateur" author. I 
never knew just why. Dr. Mitchell was no more an 
amateur in authorship than he was in medicine. 
Of course no author goes through the same well- 
marked preparation that a physician or a lawyer 
must go through, but he learns by writing — 
which is the way Hawthorne and Stevenson and 
Kipling learned. Between the issue of Dr. Mitch- 
ell's first book, "Researches upon the Venom of 
the Rattlesnake," and his last, " Westways," there 
was a span of fifty-three years, and in that time 
Dr. Mitchell, starting with a rare gift, acquired 
and perfected a wonderfully clear, forcible, and al- 
ways charming style. In his novels there is often- 
times pathological information that lends a seri- 
ousness of purpose to their fictional form, but it is 
because of their imaginative virility, their poetic 
moulding of material fact into poetic vision and 
romantic atmosphere that they will live in Ameri- 

[ 191 ] 



A GOLDEN AGE OF AUTHORS 

can literature. His chapter on the death of Andre 
in ''Hugh Wynne" and the Gettysburg chapter in 
"Westways" are well-nigh classics. 

Dr. Mitchell was an unusually careful and con- 
scientious writer, not only going over his manu- 
script with great care, but having every book set 
up in type at his own expense and made up into 
pages, before formally turning it over to his pub- 
lishers for their resetting. 

I remember his last call at our office on his way 
from Bar Harbor to Philadelphia. "Have you writ- 
ten much this summer. Dr. Mitchell.^" He was 
over eighty then. ''No, nothing at all. Oh, yes, I 
forgot. I wrote a five-thousand-line poem, 'Barab- 
bas.'" He was a good story-teller, and he enjoyed 
telling of his experience with the great Paris nerve- 
speciaHst, Charcot. Calling on Charcot he sent in 
his card, but it happened to be overlooked, so Dr. 
Mitchell took his place with the patients, and 
when he entered Charcot's consulting-room he 
thought he would pretend he was one of them. "I 
have palsy," he said, showing a pair of rather 
trembling hands. "Ah," said Charcot; "smoke 
much.?" "Some." "Drink, I suppose, and play 
whist till all hours.?" "Well, I sometimes take a 
glass of Madeira with my dinner, and I am fond of 
whist." "Where are you from.? "."Philadelphia." 

[ 192 ] 



WINSTON CHURCHILL 

"What! and why do you come to me?" "Why 
not?" "Because Mitchell lives in Philadelphia. 
Why did n't you go to him?" "Oh, I think Mitch- 
ell is a good deal of a fakir." "Nonsense, sir, he is 
the greatest one of all of us. Who are you, any- 
way?" "My card is there on your table." So Char- 
cot picks up the card — "Dr. S. Weir Mitchell, 
Philadelphia." Then came explanations, embraces, 
red fire, curtain. 

A very successful historical novel was Winston 
Churchill's "Richard Carvel" which passed four 
hundred thousand copies. I saw a good deal of 
Churchill later when he was writing a then un- 
named novel which became "The Inside of the 
Cup." He was enthralled over his book, thinking 
of nothing else, and by correspondence with men 
who could contribute something from their own 
experiences, seeking conscientiously for light on the 
great religious problem which he was trying to 
solve. Churchill is never able to begin the publi- 
cation of a serial until his book is finished, for he 
always finds it necessary to rewrite his opening 
chapters. 

Another successful novel of the American Revo- 
lution was Paul Leicester Ford's" Janice Meredith," 
whose sale ran up to three hundred thousand. 
Ford's mother and my father were own cousins, 

[ 193 ] 



A GOLDEN AGE OF AUTHORS 

both grandchildren of Noah Webster, whom they 
remembered, but who died before I was born. 
When I went to New York as a young man, Paul's 
father, Gordon L. Ford, and his wife were very 
kind to me, having me often for Sunday dinner in 
their big sunny home on Brooklyn Heights, over- 
looking the bay and the ferries. There was no 
bridge then. In after years, reading Ernest Poole's 
fine story, "The Harbor," I was reminded of the 
Ford home. Mr. Ford was the publisher of the New 
York Tribune, in days when it was known as the 
"Try-bune" and Horace Greeley edited it; and he 
was a famous collector of books, autograph letters, 
and especially of pamphlets bearing upon Ameri- 
can history. Dealers knew that he would pay a 
cent for every pamphlet brought him, no matter 
how great the number, and when he died he owned 
hundreds of thousands of them, many turning out 
to be of considerable value The library in his 
house was an immense room, the bookcases run- 
ning to the ceiling, and there on my first Sunday 
visit I saw little Paul, a lad of ten and a cripple 
from early childhood, standing high on a ladder, 
reading. In that atmosphere of American history 
the future author of "Janice Meredith" and "The 
Honorable Peter Sterling" grew up. 

[ 194 ] 



CHARLES D. STEWART 

It was in 1904 that one of those rare Hterary 
surprises came into our office in the shape of the 
manuscript of a book entitled "The Fugitive 
Blacksmith," the work of an unknown writer, 
Charles D. Stewart, of Chicago, a first book, and 
we considered it a work of genius. We published it 
in February, 1905, and I went to Chicago to be 
there when the book was issued, for we had planned 
an advertising campaign to center in the author's 
home — we reasoned that his fellow authors of 
Chicago would be interested and so would the 
newspapers. I found the home of Stewart, two or 
three rooms over a corner grocery in a part of the 
city with which I was not familiar. He was out 
walking; it was five o'clock, and his wife said he 
would be back at six. I walked, too, and calling an 
hour later Stewart himself came to the door, clad 
in undershirt and trousers, shaving. A good clean 
intellectual face he had. I went in, supped with the 
two, and talked over the table for four hours. My 
host knew a little of everything, and a great deal of 
many things. He had been a photo-engraver, also a 
walking delegate in charge of a strike; he had done 
what the Fugitive Blacksmith had done; he had 
tramped and ridden and rowed and steamed down 
through the middle of America with the result that 
he had written an Odyssey of the Mississippi 

[ 195 ] 



A GOLDEN AGE OF AUTHORS 

River. In his second book, ''Partners of Provi- 
dence," he utilized his experience on the river 
itself, and the book has always seemed to me a 
companion volume to Mark Twain's "Life on 
the Mississippi." When "Partners of Providence" 
came out I sent a copy to Mark Twain, but he 
never acknowledged it or spoke of it. 

When I called upon Stewart he did not know a 
literary person in Chicago or a newspaper man. 
Here was a writer who had created the greatest 
book that had come out of that city in years, a city 
which prided itself on its appreciation of literature 
and art, absolutely unknown to any of the elect 
who met in "The Little Room" and tried out their 
wares on each other. Nor did he want to know 
them; he was a man of the people, and the people 
were the companions he chose. 

I have a large package of letters of apprecia- 
tion of "The Fugitive Blacksmith," remarkable 
letters they are — from Thomas Bailey Aldrich, 
Agnes Repplier, George Gary Eggleston, Professor 
Henry A. Beers, Henry van Dyke, John Hay, Joel 
Chandler Harris, John Kendrick Bangs, Robert 
Grant, Thomas E. Watson, and others. 

There was a character " Finer ty" in the book, 
who kept the sandhouse. Stewart knew of a real 
Finerty working on a railroad in Texas and we sent 

[ 196 ] 



CHARLES D. STEWART 

him a copy. (And perhaps he was the real Finerty 
— I never knew.) He wrote to us: 

In reading the story I was like the other Finerty, very 
interested. I would forget all about Finerty until he 
would butt in. It will entertain any one who enjoys 
good reading. It is comical. The Blacksmith is true to 
life — as I have passed through a good many of his ex- 
periences. 

Stewart came to visit me in New York, and I 
have never been more impressed by criticism of our 
buildings than I was by his. He had never been 
east of Buffalo before. He hit at once on a fault of 
our Public Library — too light a stone, foolish to 
use it in a smoky city; and his comparison of the 
Tiffany Building with the Gorham Building and 
its fine fagade on the side street, the two diago- 
nally across from each other, gave the Gorham 
Building the preference. I remembered that Mead, 
of McKim, Mead & White, architects of both 
buildings, had told me, when they were under con- 
struction, that artists would prefer the Gorham 
Building, and the untutored but discerning Charles 
D. Stewart agreed with them. 

We spent nearly the whole of one night walk- 
ing over Riverside Drive and the Grant's Tomb- 
Columbia district. When we were tired we sat down 
on the cold stone behind the Alma Mater statue at 

[ 197 ] 



A GOLDEN AGE OF AUTHORS 

the top of the Columbia Library steps, and talked 
on. A night-watchman would come around occa- 
sionally, and although he was suspicious at first it 
wore off as our harmlessness became more and 
more evident with the passing hours. 

Stewart later became interested in the cruxes of 
Shakespeare, and he wrote a book in which he 
made clear more of the puzzling passages in that 
author than any one man had imcovered in years. 



CHAPTER XIII 

The De Vinne Press — The Century Dictionary 
RoswELL Smith was always attracted by the right 
kind of men; the fact that a printing house or a 
paper house was a very great concern, doing an 
immense business, did not draw him as he was 
drawn by a man in whom he saw the abihty to 
turn a small business into a larger one. He met and 
liked Theodore Low De Vinne (the name is pro- 
nounced in two syllables, Vin-ne), at that time a 
partner in the old firm of Francis Hart & Co., mak- 
ers of blank-books. None of its members had ever 
printed a wood-cut in their lives, nor did they 
know anything about any other kind of business 
than the ruling and printing of ledgers and jour- 
nals. And yet Roswell Smith, with that strange 
prescience that he often showed, picked Theodore 
Low De Vinne and gave him the chance to become 
the foremost printer in the world — and he be- 
came it! Mr. De Vinne began with St. Nicholas, 
and here on my desk is a little sheet of blue paper, 
5x8, containing, in the handwriting of Mr. De 
Vinne, an estimate for printing the first number of 
that magazine: ''Probable cost of 50,000 copies of 

[ 199 ] 



A GOLDEN AGE OF AUTHORS 

a pamphlet of 48 pages, composition, alteration, 
press work, folding, stitching, etc." 

St. Nicholas was his very first job of that kind, 
but just as soon as he learned how to print it, Mr. 
Smith gave him the chance to print Scribner's 
Monthly, and with that Mr. De Vinne started on a 
career which brought him to the very top of his 
profession and made him an accepted authority in 
two continents on the art of wood-cut printing. 
Roswell Smith made out of a blank-book manu- 
facturer an expert who wrote "A History of Wood- 
Cut Printing" and many books on typography 
and composition, and collections of rules which are 
used for the guidance of printers the world over. 
A popular type was named for him, " De Vinne," 
though it should be said that Mr. De Vinne was 
not in any way responsible for it. Several fonts of 
notably artistic types were prepared under his 
supervision, and one of them was used for a time as 
the body-type of The Century Magazine, but was 
discarded after it became evident that the public 
was too accustomed to more commonplace fash- 
ions. 

Mr. De Vinne would take any amount of pains 
to make his work perfect. Under him was perfected 
the system of overlaying and underlaying wood- 
cuts, pasting bits of paper on the back in as many 

[ 200 ] 




^ X^. c^.'^Z^^ 



THEODORE L. DE VINNE 

thicknesses as were necessary to bring up the parts 
that were sunken or were not thick enough. A 
costly press would stand idle for many days while 
this work was being done; a job that could be run 
off in three days would sometimes take five to pre- 
pare. The supervision which Drake gave daily to 
this part of the work helped immensely to make it 
perfect. He was unfailing in his patience and in his 
kindliness; pressmen would do anything for him, 
and Mr. De Vinne backed him in every suggestion. 
No detail was too small for Drake's eye and 
thought. When the press would begin to run after 
the labor of days during the making-ready, he 
would stand over it watching its product as a 
mother watches her baby's first steps, and De 
Vinne, Drake, and pressmen would rejoice together 
as some particularly finely engraved Cole block 
would begin to throw off its rich, dark impres- 
sions, serene, beautiful, multiplying in thousands 
and thousands of copies, to be a joy forever in ap- 
preciative homes. 

The art of printing, which Theodore L. De 
Vinne himself learned by printing The Century 
Company's publications, was carried further by 
him than by any other printer of his day. The most 
beautiful books that came from any press, includ- 
ing the issues of the Grolier Club, were products 

[ 201 ] 



A GOLDEN AGE OF AUTHORS 

of the De Vinne Press during the years that he 
and Roswell Smith and Mr. Smith's immediate 
successors took an interest in the work. 

At the time that the firm name was changed 
from Francis Hart & Co., Mr. De Vinne desired to 
honor the man who had given him his great op- 
portunity by naming the press after him, calling 
it ''The Roswell Smith Press" or "The Century 
Press," but this Mr. Smith would not think of, and 
he insisted that Mr. De Vinne's own name should 
be used. He felt that the De Vinne name was one 
which could be associated for generations with the 
work Mr. De Vinne had founded. But he had no 
such feeling about his own name in connection 
with his own business; when the name of Scribner 
& Co. was changed, the younger men desired and 
every one supposed that Roswell Smith, who at 
that time owned nearly all of the stock, would give 
the company his own name, but not so; he believed 
he was founding a company in which men would 
some day labor who did not know the founder and 
that they would do better work under an imper- 
sonal name. But Mr. De Vinne had a son to carry 
on his business, and later a grandson. Mr.^ Smith 
had no son. 

Mr. De Vinne insisted on putting the inscription 
"Printers toThe Century Co." on the building 

[ 202 ] 



THE CENTURY DICTIONARY 

which he and Roswell Smith built together for the 
use of the press. The architects were Babb, Cook 
& Willard; the result of their work stands at the 
corner of Lafayette and Fourth Streets, and it is a 
triumph of good taste. Its solidity makes it possi- 
ble to put heavy machinery on any floor. 

Mr. De Vinne contributed largely to the beauty 
of the page of The Century Dictionary, though 
several men of our office force had a hand in it, 
especially Drake and Chichester. New type was 
made and an immense quantity of it ordered, it be- 
ing necessary to keep many pages in type at the 
same time for galley proofs and page proofs which 
were read in so many different stages by a great 
number of editors. 

It was Dr. Holland's suggestion, made long be- 
fore, that some time the company should create 
and publish a great reference book; an encyclo- 
pedia was what he had in mind. As a beginning the 
right to publish Ogilvie's Imperial Dictionary was 
bought for America. Already Mr. Smith had failed 
to purchase an interest in an American dictionary 
which was found to be not for sale. The plates of 
the Imperial should be Americanized, preference 
being given to American spellings over English, as 
** honor" for "honour," but the work had not gone 
far when it was seen that the result would be a 

[ 203 1 



A GOLDEN AGE OF AUTHORS 

hodge-podge. Then greater changes were planned, 
the whole dictionary should be made over; then 
the idea of using the Imperial except for a word- 
list was abandoned (and later the Imperial was not 
used even for that). It was decided to create an 
entirely new dictionary of the English language, 
more complete than any other, its definitions to 
be encyclopedic in their scope. Professor WiUiam 
Dwight Whitney of Yale was invited to be editor- 
in-chief, and the services of Benjamin Eli Smith, a 
graduate of Amherst and at that time an instructor 
in psychology at Johns Hopkins, were secured as 
managing-editor. These two men proved to be ab- 
solutely ideal. Professor Whitney was a thorough 
student in the science of words. Benjamin Smith 
was an all-round scholar and a wonderful execu- 
tive — Frank Stockton could have written a story 
about him and called it "'The Harmonizer of Ex- 
perts." Later Benjamin Smith became editor-in- 
chief of The Cyclopedia of Names and of the 
Atlas. 

An oflSce force was secured, and the best special- 
ists in the world who were fitted for the task were 
asked to take charge of the difiFerent departments. 
Soon five hundred people were reading for uses of 
words and quotations, and an enterprise was 
launched which took ten years to complete, and, 

[ 204 1 



THE CENTURY DICTIONARY 

with The Century Cyclopedia of Names and the 
Atlas which followed it, cost $987,000; while subse- 
quent revisions and additions brought the total 
expenditure to a million and a quarter. And yet it 
had not been planned at first as a great project at 
all, but had gone on from the smallest beginnings 
to result in what is unquestionably the greatest of 
American literary achievements. In France, Spain, 
and other continental countries such works are 
owned and paid for by the nation, or are under 
university authority. In England, Oxford Univer- 
sity publishes the Philological Society's great dic- 
tionary, and Cambridge is held responsible for the 
Britannica. Here private capital and enterprise did 
it all. 

During the years that the dictionary was in the 
making The Century Magazine, with its War Se- 
ries, Lincoln Life, and Kennan's Siberia, was so 
successful that it was never necessary to borrow a 
dollar from the banks to pay the increasing yearly 
dictionary bills, and good dividends always were 
made to the stockholders from the yearly surplus 
profits. The dictionary cost about $100,000 a year 
— less at first, more when the manuscript was be- 
ing put into type. 

Is it strange that Roswell Smith felt that the 
God who watched over his enterprises had put into 

[ 205 ] 



A GOLDEN AGE OF AUTHORS 

the minds of his staflF the ideas which blossomed 
into dollars and paid the dictionary bills? 

The work of illustrating The Century Diction- 
ary was given to William Lewis Eraser, Drake's 
companion in the Art Department, and on his 
shoulders fell the task of ordering and passing upon 
the thousands of cuts used in the book — a delicate 
piece of work when one realizes that each drawing 
must be absolutely correct, that too much "art" 
must not be apparent in a reference book, that the 
editors (and especially the expert in charge of the 
particular department) must be satisfied, and that 
one department should not be over-illustrated at 
the expense of another — and that each expert had 
no interest whatever in any other department, but 
simply wanted all the pictures he could get for his 
own definitions. 

Owners of interesting or unique objects, personal 
friends of Mr. Eraser or of others on the force, 
were called upon for contributions. The writer had 
brought home from Egypt some good scarabs, one 
of which he was wearing as a scarf-pin. Eraser 
requisitioned it for an illustration of "cartouche," 
as it had a particularly clear cutting. Lending that 
scarf-pin for a dictionary illustration has been an 
indirect source of great joy to the owner. The man- 
ner of obtaining the joy is to let the scarf-pin be 

[ 206 ] 



THE CENTURY DICTIONARY 

seen by some one who knows a good deal about 
Egyptology, then to lead up to "cartouche" and 
to display an ignorance of the subject by express- 
ing the idea that presumably all scarabs bear the 
same cartouche. The dispensing of knowledge is a 
human attribute that few can resist. "Nonsense," 
readily falls the Egyptologist, "they are the 
names of different kings and the casual traveler 
hardly ever in a lifetime sees two alike." "Why, I 
had the idea that this cartouche was just like the 
one in the dictionary." More "nonsense" — some- 
times followed by a small bet — comparison of the 
pin and the dictionary cut. The same, to a hair! 
Utter discomfiture of the learned one, who, how- 
ever, is not suffered to remain long in ignorance of 
the reason for the coincidence. 

A serious matter in connection with the publica- 
tion of a great reference book is the fact that the 
information must be changed from time to time as 
new words and new meanings come into the lan- 
guage. In the case of a book like The Century Cy- 
clopedia of Names, a great war will bring to the fore 
the names of many generals never before heard of, 
places will be made famous that were practically 
unknown — many changes in plates must be made 
after every upheaval of the world. A new edition of 
the Encyclopaedia Britannica will last for hardly a 

[ 207 ] 



A GOLDEN AGE OF AUTHORS 

single generation, and then it must be rewritten 
and reset. Great business acumen is needed to make 
such an enormously expensive work successful in 
its comparatively short life. The happy thought of 
using India paper for the latest edition of the Bri- 
tannica has been responsible for more sales than 
the contents of the book — such an easily under- 
stood and quickly appreciated novelty as it was. 
Printing The Century Dictionary on India paper 
was tried long ago, but at that time the paper was 
too soft and would not take cuts. 

A criticism of The Century Dictionary was once 
brought to my attention under interesting circum- 
stances. I was staying with George Kennan at 
Baddeck, Nova Scotia, at the time that announce- 
ment was made of Dr. Cook's alleged discovery of 
the North Pole. It will be remembered that Peary 
arrived in this country a few days after that an- 
nouncement, and Kennan and I decided to go to 
Sidney, near by, and meet Peary when he landed. 
With forty newspaper correspondents, we sat 
around the little Sidney hotel for nearly a week, 
until the good ship Roosevelt, weather-beaten and 
ice-torn, came in, bringing Peary and his band, 
the commander himself considerably incensed over 
the possibility of losing his right to the discovery 
of the Pole by the claims of a cheap adventurer. 

[ 208 ] 



THE CENTURY DICTIONARY 

In talking with Captain Bartlett one day, I said: 
"I wish Peary hadn't sent some of those dis- 
patches — they were n't worded very well — es- 
pecially the one which said that Cook had 'handed 
the American people a gold brick ! ' Could n't he 
have found a better expression?" "Your fault," 
said Bartlett, *'your fault and that of The Century 
Dictionary which we had with us. The commander 
gave me that dispatch and asked me to read it and 
tell him what I thought of it, and then take it per- 
sonally to the wireless station. I told him I did n't 
like *gold brick.' 'Very well, look it up in The Cen- 
tury Dictionary, and see if you can find a good 
synonym.' And I could n't. No, sir, there was no 
*gold brick' in the dictionary at all, and we had to 
let it go. Don't blame us." 

Looking this up I find the term in the supple- 
ment published since, but it was not in the original 
edition. Many interesting things about dictiona- 
ries were unearthed while the office was engaged on 
The Century. A definition of the word "banana" 
in another dictionary greatly amused the force. 
After the ordinary definition this was added: "In 
the opinion of the writer the banana is the finest 
fruit there is." The dear man — he liked bananas 
and did not care who knew it ! 

A noted expert in what may be called "long- 
[ 209 ] 



A GOLDEN AGE OF AUTHORS 

forgotten lore" offered his services to the manage- 
ment of The Cyclopedia of Names when work on it 
was beginning. He was refused. He then "lay low" 
till the book appeared, and after studying it evi- 
dently with a microscope for a few weeks, he offered 
to sell us the knowledge of some hundreds of small 
errors in his specialty. The editors, unwarned, had 
used an obsolete authority. His perfectly fair price 
was met, and plate changes were made immedi- 
ately, which seems a much more mutually agreea- 
ble way of settling such a matter, in which the pub- 
lic benefits, than to have the finder of errors print a 
book about them as was done in the case of another 
great work of reference not long ago. 



CHAPTER XIV 

Old-time humor 

Why is it that our standard of humor changes al- 
most with each generation? Try a girl or boy of 
high-school age on Artemus Ward or the works of 
John PhcBnix and see what happens. The youth of 
to-day do not find as much to laugh at in "The In- 
nocents Abroad" as we found when it first burst 
upon a conventional world; "The Dodge Club," by 
James De Mille, was very funny to me once, but it 
is funny no longer — nor have the young people of 
to-day so much as heard of it. Are they reading the 
Essays of the gentle Elia.f^ How we enjoyed the 
quips and cranks of the breezy Gail Hamilton; 
now we prefer the more subtle, self-contained 
touch of Agnes Repplier, 

Did your father read Petroleum V. Nasby's let- 
ters written while postmaster at "Confederit X 
Roads wich is in the stait of Kentucky," which so 
amused Lincoln .^^ Did you ever hear read aloud 
when you were a child the sonorous paragraphs of 
"The New Gospel of Peace, according to St. Ben- 
jamin" (Park Benjamin, I believe).^ It was written 
in the phraseology of the Bible, a form which was 

[ 211 ] 



A GOLDEN AGE OF AUTHORS 

considered highly humorous especially in episto- 
lary correspondence. There was an older cousin of 
mine to whom, as a boy, I used to write reams of 
Bible letters. Here is an extract from such a letter, 
written by the Gail Hamilton to whom I have re- 
ferred. She was a sister of Mrs. James G, Blaine, 
her real name Mary Abigail Dodge. Evidently the 
publishers had tried to send her some magazines, 
but succeeded only in reaching her with a letter 
advising her of the gift. This was her answer: 

I suppose I must say to you as the Lord said unto 
David my father, whereas it was in thine heart to send 
me the November number and the bound volume of St. 
Nicholas, thou didst well that it was in thine heart. 
Nevertheless thou didst not send it, neither thou nor 
thy father, etc. 

All that is amusing about this now is that anybody 
should do it. But Miss Dodge could write letters 
that would be enjoyed to-day. Witness this, to one 
of our editors: 

I came through New York on the flying artillery. 
And besides I don't think I should have courage to ven- 
ture into the lion's den anyway. I am afraid of New 
York, and you must first come to Hamilton or Wash- 
ington and let me see how formidable you are. But on 
the whole is it not more comfortable for us to remain 
personally unknown.^ Fancy how awkward you would 
feel to be forced to come down to the breakfast table 

[ 212 ] 



JOSH BILLINGS 

and say to a guest, "Miss Dodge, your paper is very 
heavy and would sink the magazine if I should be so 
stupid as to print it." 

Abraham Lincoln's stories were amusing and al- 
ways pat as he told them to the men who gathered 
about him in the White House in the days of the 
Civil War, but we could hardly imagine Woodrow 
Wilson telling such stories to-day or finding an in- 
terested listener if he did. We are no longer amused 
by the spelling "2 mutch"; we turn from it in dis- 
gust. If a new Josh Billings should print "A Essa 
on the Muel" we could not read it. But our fathers 
could — and did, after the author had printed the 
same matter in proper spelling in "An Essay on 
the Mule" and found no readers at all. 

Dr. Holland liked the work of "Josh Billings," 
but not his spelling, and when editor of Scribner's 
he engaged Mr. Shaw to contribute his aphorisms 
to the magazine under the heading "Uncle Esek's 
Wisdom," properly spelled. To the owner of the 
font of wisdom "Josh Billings" or "Uncle Esek" 
as pen-names were equally satisfactory and an edi- 
tor could have any spelling that pleased him. 

xFrom an old file of Scribner's Monthly one may 
sample "Uncle Esek" as follows: 

Common sense is the gift of heaven; enough of it is 
genius. 

[ 213 ] 



A GOLDEN AGE OF AUTHORS 

We owe one half of our success in this world to some 
circumstance, and the other half to taking the circum- 
stance on the wing. 

These little aphorisms came to us about forty 
at a time, each one written in pencil on a separate 
slip of paper. They were chunks of real wisdom too. 

When Mr. Shaw made aphorisms under the 
name of "Josh BiUings" they read like these: 

Kontentment can be cultivated a little, but it is hard 
to acquire. 

Silence never makes any blunders, and alwus gits as 
much credit as is due it, and oftimes more. 

Artemus Ward was more pronounced in his mis- 
spellings: 

She clung to me and sed "you air my Affinerty!" 
" What upon airth is that? " I shouted. * 

"Dost thou not know?" 
"No, Idostent!" 

This is from Artemus Ward's "Among the Free 
Lovers," one of the many sketches with which he 
fought the windmills of his day — Mormons, 
Shakers, Suffragists, "Secesh," and such. 

Doubtless if "Josh Billings" and Artemus Ward, 
Q. K. Philander Doesticks, Orpheus C. Kerr, and 
the rest were alive to-day they would long ago have 
changed their fashion in humor and we might be 
enjoying them as our elders enjoyed them in the 

[ 2U ] 



THE LIFE OF P. T. BARNUM 

sixties. Mark Twain changed his manner repeat- 
edly. From "The Innocents Abroad" to "The 
Prince and the Pauper" is a long jump, and still 
longer to "Joan of Arc." 

Artemus Ward was writing when I was very 
young, and as I grew old enough I read his works 
with joy and gladness. I never saw him, nor do I 
remember seeing "Josh Billings," who must have 
been often in our office. 

I was a very small boy when one day I found a 
treasure in a box in the harness-room of my grand- 
father's barn. It was a copy of "The Life of P. T. 
Barnum, by Himself," a book absolutely unlike 
any I had read hitherto (under guidance). It bore 
no relation to "The Swiss Family Robinson" or to 
the RoUo Books which I knew so well. It was more 
like the Arabian Nights, but its rollicking humor 
made that classic look like the Book of Job. In fact 
it was so funny that I had the feeling, probably a 
correct one, that never in the world would I be al- 
lowed to read it, so "The Life of P. T. Barnum, by 
Himself," became a stolen sweet for barn consump- 
tion only. It was a "first edition." I have seen cop- 
ies of Barnmn's "Life" in later years, but it had 
been much "refined" — gone was the record of 
those practical jokes which had so charmed my 
childhood. 

[ 215 ] 



A GOLDEN AGE OF AUTHORS 

The people of Danbury, Connecticut, according 
to that book, must have been divided into two 
classes, the jokers and the butts. Everybody was 
one or the other. The town must have laughed 
from the time it got up in the morning, to find its 
walks and steps made slippery or covered with tar, 
until it went to bed at night and fell through the 
mattress onto the floor. 

As an indication of how styles in jokes change 
with the years, I would like to relate one story 
from that book which has stayed always with me 
— the only one — and which seemed at the age of 
nine the very funniest thing that ever happened in 
the world. 

A party of Danbury men started for New York, 
happy in the fact that they were dwellers in 
a dreamland situated on the very banks of the 
Tigris; — never could Haroun-al-Rashid have be- 
held more wonders in his nightly walks than came 
under the eye of the Danbury watchman with 
every set of sun. These men elected a strange mode 
of conveyance, by rail to the shore, by schooner 
the rest of the way to New York. They were to ar- 
rive early Sunday morning, but schooners are pro- 
verbially late; the morning was well advanced be- 
fore the city lay before them. And they must be 
shaven before they could walk up Broadway in a 

I 216 ] 



THE LIFE OF P. T. BARNUM 

crowd of church-goers. One man had a razor. He 
would lend it, or, better, he was a barber and 
would shave them. But there might not be time; 
it was manifestly unfair to shave some and not all. 
A happy thought, he would shave one half of each 
man's face and if there were time, then the other 
half. Those simple Danbury souls, who should 
have known that there was a joke lurking some- 
where, agreed to this Arabian Nights' proposition. 
One half of every face shaved, the barber walked 
to the rail to strop his razor — when overboard it 
went. 

Then came the march up Broadway. To my 
youthful imagination those men had half of the 
beard of an East-Side rabbi, and were clean-shaven 
on the other side, a spectacle that would have 
shaken to the core those Broadway church-goers. 
As I grew older I realized that men would hardly 
make a spectacle of themselves with a half-beard 
of a few days' growth, and Mr. Barnum's humor 
rather palled. But how could any grown-up person 
have failed to see the fault in it? Was Mr. Barnum 
catering only to the very young .^ 

Later the city of Danbury produced Mr. James 
M. Bailey, known as "The Danbury News man," 
perhaps the first of the writers of short, humor- 
ous newspaper paragraphs, continued later by the 

[ 217 ] 



A GOLDEN AGE OF AUTHORS 

Detroit Free Press and other papers, and still to 
be found in theYonkers Statesman. 

A few weeks ago while on a lecture tour I was at 
Burlington, Iowa, and coming out of the hall in the 
evening I saw flaming against the sky, in electric 
hghts, the word "Hawk-Eye." The Burlington 
Hawk-Eye! It was one of the best of the funny 
papers of my boyhood; I had not heard or seen its 
name for years. 

John Kendrick Bangs has been a long-time 
friend. I lived in Yonkers when he ran for mayor of 
that city, and being beaten he had a chance to 
write what was probably a more entertaining story 
of his experiences as a candidate than it is likely he 
could have written of an actual mayoralty. 

Bill Nye was a sweet-natured, kindly humorist, 
with a delightful twist to his fun. He could tell 
stories on the platform to crowded audiences, or 
gather a few children around him, as he gathered 
mine one night in their nursery, — I remember 
them standing wide-eyed, in their red-flannel 
nightgowns, — while he filled them full of the de- 
lights and the mystery of " Ali Baba and the Forty 
Thieves." 

I have in my file a letter from Bill Nye, replying 
to an invitation to an Aldine Club party. It is writ- 

[ 218 ] 



BILL NYE 

ten from Arden, North Carolina, where he went to 
Hve on account of the chmate — which he used to 
say he had to hang a blanket up over the door 
to keep out. I had asked him to be with us on the 
evening of November 1, 1895. This was his answer: 

I am professionally in Brooklyn October 31st, but the 
manager has not yet told me where I'll be on the 1st. 
That at present is between him and his God. 

I hope to see you before that, however, and tell you 
more definitely. 

Yours sincerely 

Edgar W. Nye 

I had a dear friend, another gentle humorist 
(one cannot imagine a fierce humorist), who was 
most systematic in the placing of the outcome of 
his brain. He had a list of thirty periodicals any 
one of which might take, and most of them at some 
time had taken, his productions, and he opened an 
account with them, just as George Washington 
opened an account with every man with whom he 
played cards. After breakfast and the postman's 
call, my friend sat down to the practical work of 
the day. Opus 212 had been returned by periodical 
No. 17. All traces of No. 17's marks were at once 
removed, the manuscript rewrapped and mailed to 
No. 18. Opus 305 had been accepted by No. 2. 
Good. He told me that once or twice he had sent a 

[ 219 ] 



A GOLDEN AGE OF AUTHORS 

manuscript to the entire list — and it was borne in 
on him that when it had been tm^ned down by- 
thirty editors there was something the matter with 
it. He was as sensitive as that. So he rewrote it — 
and began again with No. 1. His capital was brains 
and postage stamps — they went hand in hand, 
each worthless without the other. His average 
earnings were three thousand dollars a year. 

I wonder if other people have the prejudice I 
have against a new humorist. I must be ''shown" 
and it takes time. He is trying to break into a very 
intimate part of me, almost sacred. I loved the men 
who were wont to play there; will this new-comer 
be a fit comrade? I felt so about Irvin Cobb, and 
then he wrote "Boys Will be Boys" and I took him 
in and fed him and gave him a place to sleep. 



CHAPTER XV 

Mark Twain — The Grant *' Memoirs'* — Nicolay and Hay's 
** Lincoln'* 

I KNEW Mark Twain very slightly in Hartford, for 
I was young and he was even then a great literary 
personage. He seemed a young man when he came 
to Hartford to live in 1871, but he had been a 
writer, with a tremendously growing reputation, 
for twenty years. It was in 1851 (my own parents 
had not even met at the time) that he did his first 
literary work, editing his brother Orion's paper in 
Hannibal during the editor's absence, and aston- 
ishing the natives with his brilliant and novel 
journalistic features including "To Mary in H — 1." 
His "Celebrated Jumping Frog" came out in 
book form in 1867, and my old friend, George W. 
Carleton,^ with whom I have spent so many happy 

^ Carleton was himself a good deal of a humorist. I learned two 
things from him which I have never forgotten: 

(1) If any one asks if you have been to a certain place in Europe, 
no matter where, always say you have. Otherwise you are in danger 
of this: ^ 

"Have you ever visited Lake Innisgraben?" 

"'Innisgraben'? No, where is it?" 

"What! You have never been to Innisgraben ? It's in the Austrian 
Tyrol — the smallest lake in the world, only thirteen feet long and 
eight feet wide. Wonderful! Why, man, you" — and so on. 

(2) If you are asked the name of a star, "oblige" at once. There 

[ 221 ] 



A GOLDEN AGE OF AUTHORS 

hours swapping stories under the trees of the place 
where I am writing these hues, was a prominent 
New York publisher at the time, issuing the works 
of Artemus Ward and other American humorists. 
One of his stories was that Mark Twain came into 
his store and offered him the manuscript of "The 
Jumping Frog" and that he declined it "because 
the author looked so disreputable." 

Perhaps the string tie and the careless dress gave 
Mark Twain the appearance of an outlander to 
Carleton, typical New Yorker that he was; and the 
breezy Western independence, without any sub- 
serviency in it, the drawl and the lazy air helped, 
but Bret Harte thus described Mark Twain in his 
own first impression: "His head was striking. He 
had the curly hair, the aquiline nose, and even the 
aquiline eye — an eye so eagle-like that a second 
lid would not have surprised me — of an unusual 
and dominant nature. His eyebrows were thick 
and bushy. His dress was careless, and his general 
manner one of supreme indifference to surround- 
ings and circumstances." 

We had an amateur dramatic company in Hart- 
ford, of which I became a member, and Mark 

is nothing about the star calculated to undeceive the questioner. 
Name it for him — Sirius, Jupiter, Belshazzar — anything. It sat- 
isfies, and the next time your friend meets the star he will have 
forgotten the name anyway. 

[ 222 ] 



K" 



tflT 









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r 







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MARK TWAIN 

Twain acted with it once. April 26, 1876, is the date 
of his first appearance on the dramatic stage. He 
took the part of the gardener, Peter Spyk, in the 
"Loan of a Lover," and the lady I afterwards mar- 
ried was Gertrude. Unfortunately I had no part in 
the play — unfortunately is a word I can use look- 
ing back upon it now, but at the time those of us 
who were not in the "Loan of a Lover" counted 
ourselves as fortunate, for our star developed, early 
in the performance, a propensity to go on with his 
talk after the other person's cue came. He would 
put in lines, which, while very funny to those on 
the other side of the footlights, were decidedly em- 
barrassing to his fellow actors. At one point I re- 
member he began to tell the audience about the 
tin roof which he had just put on an ell of his new 
house and rambled on for a while, ending up that 
particular gag by asking Gertrude, very much to 
her embarrassment, if she had ever put a tin roof 
on her house. 

Mark Twain was an actor — there was no doubt 
of that — and Augustin Daly wanted the com- 
pany to appear under New York limelights, but its 
members were too modest. 

It was about the time of the "Loan of a Lover" 
that Mark Twain helped fifteen or twenty of the 
young girls of Hartford to start the Saturday 

[ 223 ] 



A GOLDEN AGE OF AUTHORS 

Morning Club, its object general cultivation; and 
he would persuade distinguished friends to stop off 
in Hartford or stay over a Saturday morning to 
speak to these girls. On alternate Saturdays they 
read papers and had discussions, and the club has 
gone on to this day, some of its leading members 
the children of those who began it. Before long 
grandchildren will be ehgible. My wife was one of 
the original members, and she had an advantage 
over the other girls, for she could call the distin- 
guished founder by a first name, "Peter." Mark 
Twain often read to the club extracts from work on 
which he was engaged, and so they heard a part of 
*'The Prince and the Pauper," which he began in 
1877 and laid aside for several years. When I went 
to New York in 1878 I told Mrs. Dodge, the editor 
of St. Nicholas, about this beautiful story, suggest- 
ing that she should try to get it for a serial for her 
magazine, but I think that Mrs. Dodge felt a little 
afraid of Mark Twain then as a writer for childfen. 
Later she was glad enough to print anything that 
he would send her and St. Nicholas had as a serial 
in 1892 "Tom Sawyer Abroad." The magazine re- 
cently serialized Paine's splendid "Boy's Life of 
Mark Twain." 

Mrs. Clemens had a great influence on her hus- 
band and she often persuaded him to modify some 

[ 224 ] 



MARK TWAIN 

of his expressions and at times she kept him from 
pubKshing what he had written. It is said that only 
once did she fail, and that was when Mark Twain 
attacked the missionaries. She begged him with 
tears in her eyes not to publish the maniiscript, but 
he would do it. 

Mark Twain had such a vivid imagination, such 
a brain for embroidery, that it was difficult for him 
to tell a straight story just as it happened — he 
could make up one that was so much better. We 
all know that Albert Bigelow Paine, working on 
the Mark Twain "Life," found it necessary to dis- 
card much of the autobiographic material that 
Mark Twain had written, including his articles in 
the North American Review. Investigation, talks 
with men still living who knew the facts, simply 
proved that the tales were not so. And Mark Twain 
was no liar. He had a glorious, an almost super- 
human, imagination. As he approached threescore 
and ten he said, as quoted in the ''Life," "When I 
was younger I could remember anything, whether 
it happened or not; but I am getting old, and soon 
I shall remember only the latter." 

Just after the appearance of a book of reminis- 
cences by Major Pond, the lecture manager, I hap- 
pened to call on Mark Twain. It was Sunday after- 
noon; he was lying in his big, carved mahogany 

[ 225 ] 



A GOLDEN AGE OP AUTHORS 

bed, surrounded with books and cigars, a beauti- 
ful figure with his great towering mass of white 
hair, his keen dark eyes and overhanging brows, 
his plain white nightshirt. No pajamas for Mark 
Twain; he always wore in bed an old-fashioned, 
unembroidered, long white nightshirt. And he 
spent many of his days in bed, resting. I told him 
he would be interested in Major Pond's book, there 
was a good deal about their trip across the conti- 
nent in it. Yes, he would read it, *'but the great 
trouble with Pond is," he said in his drawling voice, 
"that he is always wanting to lecture. Why, when 
we started across the continent together on my 
lecture tour around the world, I heard that Pond 
was proposing to give his lecture on Beecher, Sun- 
day night in the churches, and I just put my foot 
down. 'Now, see here. Major, I'm the lecturer 
in this show, and I don't propose to have my 
manager open his mouth in public while we are 
together.' But I had n't more than sailed out of 
Vancouver harbor, one Sunday afternoon, before 
Pond was at it in a Vancouver church. 

"But wait till I tell you what happened in Lon- 
don. I had got around the world and my debts 
were n't all paid either, and I was sitting before my 
hotel fire one morning when in walked Pond and 
made me an offer of fifty thousand dollars for one 

[ 226 ] 



MARK TWAIN 

hundred and twenty-five nights in America. Well, 
that was something of a temptation, and I said to 
him, 'I'll have to talk with Mrs. Clemens. If she'll 
let me perhaps I '11 do it. Come in to-morrow morn- 
ing at this time and I'll let you know.' I talked to 
Mrs. Clemens all night," he told me. "'You'll 
have pneumonia,' she said. 'I'll go with you, the 
girls '11 go with you, we '11 all die.' And it was four 
o'clock in the morning before she gave in. At 
eleven I was sitting over the fire waiting for Pond; 
I even had the outline of a contract drawn up on 
the table. But he did n't come; he did n't come in 
the afternoon. By evening I would n't have gone 
to America with Pond if he 'd offered me the 
United States Treasury. He came in the next day. 
'Well, where have you been?' He'd been visiting 
Dean Hole at Rochester. 'And why didn't you 
come back yesterday.^' 'Well, the Dean wanted 
me to lecture to his people; of course it took a little 
time to get them together, and I stayed over an- 
other night and gave my lecture. Splendid audi- 
ence! Wonderful visit!' And then I opened on the 
major and the trip was off forever." 

For years I told that story as a joke on Major 
Pond. A few months ago I happened on two old 
letters from the major, written to me that summer 
while he was in England dickering with Mark 

[ 227 ] 



A GOLDEN AGE OF AUTHORS 

Twain over the American tour. There was no lec- 
ture. Mark had telegraphed the major in the coun- 
try asking him to come back to London and talk 
more about it, but the major replied he had made 
his best ofiFer and would not see him again. Fi- 
nally, although Mark Twain wanted to go, Mrs. 
Clemens refused to let him! All of which was most 
uninteresting in comparison with the story I had 
heard that Sunday afternoon. At the author's mar- 
ket rates it would have been worth five hundred 
dollars, and I had had it all to myself. True.^ per- 
haps not; — but Mark thought it was while he was 
telling it. 

Mark Twain was not often a practical joker, but 
I have heard of an instance when he is said to have 
successfully worked a joke and incidentally brought 
together two good men. Ex-Speaker Thomas B. 
Reed and Mark Twain were on a train approach- 
ing New York, and Reed asked his companion if he 
could direct him to some small, quiet hotel where 
he would not be bothered. ** Why, surely, the Hotel 
Gilder is the place for you." "Hotel Gilder.^ and 
where is that.^" "Just behind the Brevoort House 
on Clinton Place — very small, very quiet — does n't 
take in everybody. Just ring the bell and tell them 
what you want; if there is any trouble, ask to see the 
proprietor, tell him who you are and that I sent you." 

[ 228 ] 



MARK TWAIN 

And so it happened. And when the "proprietor," 
Mr. Richard Watson Gilder, came downstairs and 
found out who the guest was who so persistently 
wanted a room in his house, and who had sent him, 
it is not unlikely that the laughter could have been 
heard as far as Mark Twain's home which was 
around the corner and a block up Fifth Avenue. 
Reed stayed, and the statesman and the editor 
began a friendship which lasted through their 
lives. 

One felt in talking to Mark Twain that he was 
more than a man, that he was a jorce. He never 
talked with you that he did not say something 
worth while, nor wrote a letter that did not have 
an original thought in it. 

When his story "The MiUion-Pound Bank 
Note" was pubHshed in The Century, we got up 
some very good advertising of it, imitation Eng- 
lish bank-notes, posters, etc. We were cheered by 
the following letter: 

Villa Vivianiy 
Settignano (Florence) 
Jan, 13/93 

My Dear Ellsworth: 

It is the most variegated and extraordinary explosion 
of advertising I have encountered in my lifetime. Yes, 
and the most ingenious and seductive and beguiling, 
too — for it made me go and get the article and read it 
myself, it so inflamed my curiosity to know what it was 

[ 229 ] 



A GOLDEN AGE OF AUTHORS 

all about. When advertising can achieve that effect, it 
has struck the very summit, it seems to me. 

I have n't read the rest of my works, but would like 
to — so some time I will get you to advertise them, too. 
Please give my love to all the Century and St. Nich- 
olas friends. 

Sincerely yours, 

S. L. Clemens 

In conversation Mark Twain would avail him- 
seK of any words that came to him, sacred or pro- 
fane. I have heard him give utterance to marvel- 
ously original thoughts, clad in the verbiage of 
many different centuries. He would sometimes 
write to Will Carey from Europe a letter that 
would make one's hair stand on end with its pre- 
Shakespearean humor, asking Carey to show it to 
— of all pure souls — Gilder. I remember once he 
added, ''and if Gilder does n't care to use the idea 
send it over to Bok for The Ladies' Home Jour- 
nal." 

If he was ever profane he would use his profan- 
ity in such an absolutely unique way that no re- 
cording angel would have had the heart to set it 
down. 

The story of the loss to The Century Company 
of the publication of Grant's "Memoirs" and its 
acquisition by Mark Twain's firm, Charles L. Web- 

[ 230 ] 



GENERAL GRANT'S MEMOIRS 

ster & Co., is told in detail and with great exact- 
ness by Albert Bigelow Paine in his "supreme" 
biography of Mark Twain. I have read that biog- 
raphy more than once. It seems to me a faultless 
piece of work; the construction, and the division 
into chapters of uneven length but completely cov- 
ering the subject, have not been surpassed in book- 
making. Bos well made, I suppose, a very wonder- 
ful record of Dr. Johnson's sayings, — page after 
page after page of talk, with every "sir" set down, 
— but Paine made a great story, a masterpiece of 
biography. Mark Twain himself would be — is — 
proud of it. 

I was, of course, a junior in the days when Gen- 
eral Grant wrote his memoirs, and I had nothing to 
do with him directly. Once as he was standing in 
the corridor, his throat covered with a muflHer, his 
face drawn and grim, Mr. Roswell Smith presented 
me. The general could at that time hardly speak 
at all. I harked back in my mind to boyhood days 
when I was interested in collecting autographs. I 
wrote to all the emperors and kings of the earth. I 
wrote to the Pope, I wrote to anybody of any emi- 
nence whatever. No emperor or king or pope ever 
answered, but after writing four times to General 
Grant I added a postscript to the next letter: 
"This is the fifth time I have written to you for 

[ 231 ] 



A GOLDEN AGE OF AUTHORS 

your autograph. I propose to fight it out on this 
line if it takes all summer." By return mail he sent 
me five cards each with his name written thereon. 

The memoirs, as is well known, grew out of the 
writing which General Grant agreed to do for The 
Century War Series. He was to contribute four 
articles. The series came from the historic sugges- 
tion of Clarence Clough Buel, assistant editor of 
the magazine, that an article in hand on the John 
Brown Raid at Harper's Ferry, written '*by a Vir- 
ginian who witnessed the fight," should be accom- 
panied by an article covering the Northern point 
of view. In the paper by the Virginian (Alexander R. 
Boteler) there was mention of an article in The 
Atlantic for April, 1875, by the well-known Aboli- 
tionist Frank B. Sanborn. So Mr. Sanborn was 
asked to follow Mr. Boteler, and his paper ap- 
peared as "Comment by a Radical Abolitionist," 
both of them in The Century for July, 1883. 

It was in June that this number of The Century 
appeared, and on the 17th of July Mr. Buel pro- 
posed that the idea should be followed up and 
articles obtained from the living Federal and Con- 
federate leaders, describing the important move- 
ments and battles of the Civil War. The men were 
alive, now was the time. Suppose Napoleon and 
W^ellington had been asked to write their accounts 

[ 232 ] 



THE CENTURY WAR SERIES 

of Waterloo; could any contributions to history be 
more valuable? At first not more than a dozen sub- 
jects were planned, but the scheme grew until 
every Uving general and many officers of lower 
rank and some civilians had been asked to contrib- 
ute to a series, which, when completed, did more to 
bring together North and South than anything that 
had happened since they were torn apart in 1861. 
Incidentally the series increased the circulation of 
The Century from 127,000 monthly to 225,000. 

Mr. Gilder, editor-in-chief, placed the execution 
in the hands of Robert Underwood Johnson, asso- 
ciate editor, and Buel, assistant editor. The series 
formally began in the number for November, 1884, 
with General Beauregard's account of the Confed- 
erate side of the battle of Bull Run, and Warren 
Lee Goss's entertaining "Recollections of a Pri- 
vate," covering the same battle as seen from the 
Union ranks. In February, 1885, appeared General 
Grant's first article, "The Battle of Shiloh," and 
from that time the great success of the series was 
assured. It continued for two years, when the arti- 
cles and pictures, with nearly as many more added 
to complete and round out the history, were issued 
in four great volumes, "Battles and Leaders of the 
Civil War." The sale reached 75,000 sets, and the 
book sold at $20 and $30, according to binding. 

[ 233 ] 



A GOLDEN AGE OF AUTHORS 

In planning their work Johnson and Buel di- 
vided up the possible writers, Johnson taking 
Grant, while to Buel was assigned the leading Con- 
federate general then living, Joseph E. Johnston. 
At first, General Grant would not consider the pro- 
posal; he felt that he was not a writer, he was rest- 
ing from the labors of a busy life, with plenty of 
money and troops of friends. Everything had come 
to him; why risk his reputation by putting on 
paper his record in the battles long past.^ But then 
suddenly the financial blow fell, through the fail- 
ure of Grant & Ward, and conditions were changed; 
the money was a consideration. 

The question of a book came up at once, sug- 
gested by Johnson. I remember when Roswell 
Smith and Johnson together went to see General 
Grant at Long Branch, in the summer of 1884, and 
discussed the book. When the general returned to 
his city home Mr. Roswell Smith supposed the 
final arrangements were about to be made. It was 
in November, 1884, — Paine tells the story in his 
biography, — that George W. Cable and Mark 
Twain gave a reading at the old Chickering Hall, 
which stood at the corner of Fifth Avenue and 
Eighteenth Street. Coming out, Mark Twain over- 
heard Gilder tell a friend that General Grant had 
decided to write his memoirs. Three years before 

[ 234 ] 



GENERAL GRANT'S MEMOIRS 

Mark Twain had proposed this very thing to Gen- 
eral Grant, as no doubt others had proposed it — • 
for any one interested in writing would be quite 
apt to suggest that Grant should set down in his 
lifetime the story of his part in the Civil War. But 
now Mark Twain, backing his nephew Charles L. 
Webster, had become a publisher. To his keen 
business sense such a book made an instant appeal, 
and as he stood there in the doorway of Chickering 
Hall, the rain pouring off the rim of his umbrella, 
he resolved to be the publisher of Grant's "Mem- 
oirs." For was not the book his own suggestion.? 

In many ways no one could be more wide awake 
than Roswell Smith, yet it has never seemed to me 
that he quite grasped the greatness of that book. 
Magazines had been his specialty, the company 
had published very few books. The successful 
''Battles and Leaders of the Civil War" was then 
in the future. In his mind he classed Grant's life 
with other "lives of great men" which he was try- 
ing to secure. He did get a "Life" of William Lloyd 
Garrison and a "Life" of Samuel Bowles, and I 
really believe that he considered Grant's "Life" 
almost as a companion volume to these; perhaps 
expecting a little more in sales, but he did not see 
in it the tremendous success which Mark Twain 
saw at once. Smith wrote to Gilder telling him of 

[ 235 ] 



A GOLDEN AGE OF AUTHORS 

the interview at Long Branch and saying that 
General Grant's ideas agreed with his — "to make 
a good book, manufacture it handsomely, sell it at 
a reasonable price, and make it so commanding 
that we can secure competent agents at a fair com- 
mission." And Mr. Smith added : ** When the book is 
ready he (General Grant) is to come to us with it." 
The Century Company's contract with General 
Grant had been drawn up when Mark Twain 
stepped in and secured the prize. I did not know or 
I do not recall the royalty proposed by Roswell 
Smith, but I imagine that it was twenty per cent. 
Mark Twain offered either twenty per cent gross 
royalty or seventy per cent of the net profit, and 
offered to write his check for twenty-five thousand 
dollars on account of advance royalties on the first 
volume and to add a like amount for each future 
volume. When the contract was signed he handed 
General Grant a check for ten thousand dollars. 
The general hesitated a long time before signing. 
He felt that The Century Company was the right- 
ful publisher — Mark Twain may have suggested 
the book, but The Century Company made him 
write it, and it was only when his old friend George 
W. Childs of Philadelphia joined with Colonel 
Fred Grant in urging him to sign the Mark Twain 
contract that he hesitatingly agreed. 

[ 236 ] 



GENERAL GRANT'S MEMOIRS 

Mark Twain's notebook, under date of March, 
1885, contains the following memorandum, quoted 
by Paine in the "Biography": 

Roswell Smith said to me, "I'm glad you got the 
book, Mr. Clemens, glad there was somebody with 
courage enough to take it under the circumstances. 
What do you think the general wanted to require of 
me?" 

"What?" 

"He wanted me to insure a sale of twenty-five thou- 
sand sets of his book. I would n't risk such a guarantee 
on any book that was ever published." 

Looking backward I have always felt that it was 
well for General Grant's family that Mark Twain's 
proposition was accepted. The Century Company 
had not been long in the book field, and I believe 
that the Webster firm handled the matter in a 
larger way than Roswell Smith would have done. 
Webster at once sent for the best subscription men 
in the country, told them exactly what was expected 
of them, and received pledges guaranteeing a sale of 
a quarter of a million sets long before publication. 

The Webster firm paid Mrs. Grant between four 
hundred and twenty and four hundred and fifty 
thousand dollars in royalties. Hanging on the wall 
of The Players for years was one of the royalty 
checks: "Pay to the order of Mrs. Julia D. Grant 
Two Hundred Thousand Dollars. Chas. L. Web- 

[ 237 ] 



A GOLDEN AGE OF AUTHORS 

ster & Co." It is said to be the largest royalty 
check in existence. 

It should be borne in mind that when Roswell 
Smith first talked with General Grant about the 
book, the general was not the pathetic figure, 
watched in sorrow by the whole world, that he be- 
came at the end. Appreciation of the great possi- 
bihties of his "Memoirs" was a slow matter. But 
slow or fast it reached Mark Twain before it 
reached Roswell Smith. And too there was "pub- 
licity" in the fact that the famous humorist Mark 
Twain had first suggested to General Grant the 
writing of his "Memoirs," of which he would be 
publisher. The Century Company's announcement 
would have been flat by comparison. 

In spite of all that the family made out of the 
book, Colonel Fred Grant told me not long before 
his death that he had figured out that they would 
have been better off if The Century Company had 
published it. I think he reached this conclusion 
from the fact that our offer was (presumably) a 
royalty of twenty per cent, which would have been 
one dollar and a half a copy on a seven-doUar-and- 
a-haK book, and my impression is that the Web- 
ster firm finally paid a round dollar per copy 
royalty. But Colonel Grant had not considered 
whether we could have sold as many copies, nor 

[ 238 ] 



GENERAL GRANT'S MEMOIRS 

whether our price would have been seven dollars 
and a half. I doubt if Mr. Smith meant to charge 
as much. 

A few years later (1894) the Webster firm, which 
had issued other books including a '*Life" of the 
Pope on which they had not been able to make 
good, failed, and the plates of the Grant "Mem- 
oirs" came to us. Of course the great sale had been 
over long before. 

It was this failure that threw upon the shoulders 
of Mark Twain at sixty years of age an indebted- 
ness of $93,000, a sum which he cheerfully started 
to earn by a lecture tour of the world. Most of his 
creditors, perhaps all, would gladly have forgiven 
the debt, but he paid it to the last penny. 

There never was any feeling in our ofiice against 
Mark Twain for taking away the Grant book. He 
continued to write for The Century and for St. 
Nicholas and he was on the best of terms with 
every one about the place. 

Roswell Smith had no hesitation in making an 
unprecedented offer of money if it seemed best to 
do so in order to secure a feature of very great value 
to the world. As the War Series in The Century 
was drawing to a close, the only thing in sight that 
was worth while to follow it was Nicolay and Hay's 
"Life" of Abraham Lincoln. For years editors and 

[ 239 ] 



A GOLDEN AGE OF AUTHORS 

publishers had known that Lincoln's two secreta- 
ries were working on it and many of them had 
tried to get it. I once found a letter from John Hay 
to Dr. Holland, written before 1880, telling him 
that the work was not then ready for consideration. 
Dr. Holland wrote to Gilder at this time that *^the 
Hay history is probably impracticable. It is too 
long and elaborate." When it was done serious com- 
petition had come down to one other house besides 
ourselves, and then it was that during an interview 
with Messrs. Nicolay and Hay in Roswell Smith's 
office he made them the offer of fifty thousand dol- 
lars for serial publication in The Century — the 
greatest sum that had been paid for a serial up to 
that time, and I do not know of any such sum paid 
later — possibly Mr. Roosevelt received as much 
for his African articles in Scribner's Magazine, but 
as to that I do not know. 

Before the oflFer was made Messrs. Nicolay and 
Hay had not been favorably disposed to consider 
serial publication at all, for they feared that edi- 
tors would wish to cut a book of more than a mil- 
lion words and print only the cream. But fifty 
thousand dollars was a great sum. They could not 
refuse it. And our editors arranged to do some cut- 
ting, for the magazine had so fully covered the his- 
tory of the Civil War in the War Series that it was 

[ 240 ] 



NICOLAY AND HAY'S LINCOLN 

not necessary to include that part of the Lincoln 
"Life" and it was condensed. Not many writers 
are pleased with a "condensation" of their work 
and John Hay was no exception, as is indicated 
in Thayer's " Life." What was printed ran from 
November, 1886, until February, 1890, more than 
three years, and held the new readers who had been 
first attracted to The Century by the War papers. 
Roswell Smith would not guarantee General 
Grant a sale of twenty-five thousand copies of his 
book — that was merely a matter of dollars and 
cents, but he would pay for a Lincoln "Life," 
which he believed to be the greatest "Life" of the 
greatest American that had been or could be writ- 
ten, the largest sum that had ever been paid for a 
serial — a sum which many people thought at the 
time was absurd. As for what was considered his 
lack of business foresight in losing the book publi- 
cation of the Grant "Memoirs," he once told Gil- 
der that he felt himself unfitted for book-publish- 
ing, that he had no love for the detail necessary to 
putting forth each individual book — he loved to 
plan largely, nor was making money ever a prime 
object with him. When he created The Century 
Dictionary he felt confident that if he made the 
greatest and best dictionary possible, the money 
would come back; that is, if he considered the 

[ Ml 1 



A GOLDEN AGE OF AUTHORS 

money question at all, that would be the way his 
mind would work. In the case of General Grant's 
book a member of his house had thought of it, he 
himself had helped to persuade the general to 
write it, and that meant more to him than making 
money out of its publication. And he did not see it 
as money, he saw a new Caesar's Commentaries, a 
great classic which he had helped to inspire. I 
know there are plenty of men in the world who 
could not understand this, who would smile out of 
a corner of their mouths and call Roswell Smith a 
fool; — but I thank God that Roswell Smith left 
enough poetry in me to let me honor him always, 
both for what he did and for what he left undone. 



CHAPTER XVI 

Dinners at the Aldine Club — Conan Doyle — Henry M. Stanley — 
Marion Crawford — Oliver Herford — Theodore Roosevelt — The 
English Winston Churchill — Major Pond — Lectures 

It was Mark Twain who called my attention to 
the fact that Hamilton W. Mabie was the best 
presiding officer at a dinner he had ever seen. We 
were going home from a banquet which had been 
given in Mark Twain's honor at the Aldine Club 
(December 4, 1900). Mabie had presided, intro- 
ducing the speakers most happily, although Mark 
Twain himseK had received the cue to his own 
speech from the decorations and the remarkable 
atmosphere which our Drake had created. In those 
days Drake's taste and tireless work made many 
notable dinners more notable. All the pillars in the 
room that night were made to look like trees, with 
branches growing out of them; and from the 
branches and from the ceiling drooped Southern 
moss sent up from Florida. Ship's lanterns of 
gleaming brass, choice bits of Drake's collection, 
hung, red-eyed, in the distance. Mark Twain sat 
in a pilot-house, made exactly like a Mississippi 
River pilot-house, except that it was open at the 
front and sides. On a half -circle sign above it was 

[ 243 ] 



A GOLDEN AGE OF AUTHORS 

lettered the name of a steamboat which our guest 
had piloted, and before him, on the table, was half 
of a helmsman's wheel. He was much touched by 
the tribute, and when he spoke he gave us whole 
chapters out of "Life on the Mississippi" which 
came back to him in those surroundings. 

I remember some of the other speakers who met 
to honor Mark Twain that night: William Dean 
Howells, Hopkinson Smith, Marion Crawford, 
Dr. S. Weir Mitchell, James Lane Allen, Winston 
Churchill, and Brander Matthews among them. 
At the guest table sat one man who was somewhat 
of a stranger to New York dinners, Owen Wister 
of Philadelphia. Mark Twain had sent me a letter 
from Wister to him saying that he wanted to go 
and see Mark Twain and telling him that there was 
"'no living American of which I'm quite so proud 
as I am of you. I promise not to say this when I 
see you." The letter bears Mark Twain's endorse- 
ment: "Dear Ellsworth: If you need another guest 
don't overlook Wister. S. L. C." I am sure Wister 
must have enjoyed that wonderful night. 

The menu had on it portraits of Mark Twain 
made at various times in his life, chiefly early por- 
traits, some of them furnished by Mrs. Clemens, 
who took infinite pains to find them for us. 

I have often attended public dinners where the 
[ 244 ] 



THE ALDINE CLUB 

guest of the evening seemed to do all the work, but 
in those Aldine dinners, with Mabie to preside and 
Drake to decorate, the hosts did their share to 
make the entertainment a success. It was under- 
stood that Mabie should not be called on for pre- 
liminary work; the guests usually were invited by 
Robert Bridges, now editor of Scribner's Magazine 
(he was once the delightful book critic, **Droch," 
of Life), and by me. 

The Aldine Club began in 1889, chiefly as a 
luncheon place for editors, artists, and publishers 
whose daily work brought them into the neighbor- 
hood of what was then Lafayette "Place"; and its 
home was an old-fashioned house, the rooms deco- 
rated in quiet colors, with quaint prints, playbills, 
and autographs on the walls. Downstairs there was 
a grill-room, furnished in the comfortable style 
of an old English chop-house, with sanded floors, 
mugs hanging on the walls, and high-backed strad- 
dle-legged chairs, wherein one might sit over the 
fire and smoke a "churchwarden" or a more mod- 
ern cigar if it so pleased him. In 1894 the club fol- 
lowed the uptown movement and had its quarters 
at Fifth Avenue and Fifteenth Street, and here 
most of its famous dinners were given. Later it 
amalgamated with the Uptown Association in the 
Fifth Avenue Building, and although much of its 

[ 245 ] 



A GOLDEN AGE OF AUTHORS 

unique character had been lost in the movings, yet 
for a time it kept up its entertainments. Here were 
given the Jefferson and the Mark Twain dinners. 

In the club-house at Fifth Avenue and Fifteenth 
Street there were dinners in honor of Barrie, Conan 
Doyle, Hall Caine, Marion Crawford, Thomas 
Bailey Aldrich, and others. There was a "Hunter's 
Night," with Theodore Roosevelt and Dr. Rains- 
ford among the speakers; "Arctic and Antarctic 
Night," with Peary and Borchgrevink; "Fo'c'sle 
Night," with Admiral Erben and "Fighting Bob" 
Evans, Admiral Meade, Lieutenant Kelley, Wads- 
worth Longfellow of Boston (a wonderful racon- 
teur), John Kendrick Bangs (who read an advance 
chapter of "A House-Boat on the Styx"), "Chim- 
mie Fadden" Townsend, Pay Inspectors Schenck 
and Billings, and, I think, still other speakers, for 
our entertainments were seldom over at the hour 
of curfew. For the inner man, "plum-duff and grog 
at six bells" were provided. 

On another night General Miles and Frederic 
Remington sat around a Western camp-fire and 
told stories, while the lights glistened on the Na- 
vajo blankets and the Mexican trappings on the 
walls. Looking back, I can remember very little 
that was said on those nights, but the decorations 
and the good-fellowship stand out. Such occasions 

[ 246 ] 



CONAN DOYLE 

are really a useful part of life in the magazine 
world, for they bring together writers and editors, 
artists and publishers, and they often bear fruit in 
stories or articles or illustrations. 

I remember an original Sherlock Holmes story, 
told by Conan Doyle, the night before he sailed 
for home, in December, 1894. The stories that oc- 
cur in this book are, I think, generally heretofore 
unpublished. I know this was printed somewhere, 
but I have told it many times in a lecture and have 
yet to meet the first person who has heard it before, 
so it is included here. 

On his arrival in Boston Doyle told us that he 
had noticed a dog-eared but familiar volume peep- 
ing out of his cabman's pocket. "You may drive 
me to Young's or the Parker House," he said. . 

"Pardon me," returned cabbie, "you will find 
Major Pond waiting for you at the Parker House." 

As they parted, the cabman asked for a pass to 
the lecture instead of a fee, and Doyle said: "Now, 
see here, I am not usually beaten at my own game. 
How did you know who I am.^^ " 

"Well, sir, of course all members of the Cab- 
men's Literary Guild knew you were coming on 
this train, and, I noticed, sir, if you will excuse me, 
that your hair has the cut of a Quakerish, Philadel- 
phia barber; your hat shows on the brim in front 

[ 247 ] 



A GOLDEN AGE OF AUTHORS 

where you tightly grasped it at a Chicago Kterary 
luncheon; your right overshoe has on it what is 
plainly a big block of Buffalo mud; and there are 
crumbs of a doughnut, which must have been 
bought at the Springfield station, on the top of 
your bag. And then, sir, to make assurance doubly 
sure, I happened to see stenciled in plain lettering 
on the end of the bag the name Conan Doyle." 

We entertained Henry M. Stanley and Mrs. 
Stanley at an afternoon reception at the Aldine. It 
was in the old club-house on Lafayette Place. I was 
on the committee, and I wanted Mr. Stanley — 
he was not knighted then — to stand in a certain 
place near the center of the room where he could 
receive the people. But he would not stay there; he 
insisted on backing up against the wall. Finally I 
appealed to Mrs. Stanley: 

"Why will not your husband stand where I put 
him.?" 

*' Simply," she said, "because he is afraid some 
one will stick him in the back with a spear." 

The habit acquired in Africa of protecting him- 
self by standing with his back against a wall was 
too much for Stanley even in the safety of a New 
York afternoon reception. Saint-Gaudens told me 
that General Sherman was like that. In making a 
bust of the general he had found it almost impossi- 

[ 248 ] 



MARION CRAWFORD 

ble to do the back of his head. He wanted no one 
behind him. 

Marion Crawford, to whom we gave one of our 
dinners, was one of the most lovable of men. He 
was a faithful subscriber to a fund which I got up 
for the education of the son of a literary friend 
who died. He always gave fifty dollars a year, as 
did Anthony Hope, Mark Twain, and many other 
good literary folk. The contributors included 
W. D. Howells, George W. Cable, Mrs. James T. 
Fields, Charles Battell Loomis, James Whitcomb 
Riley, Hall Caine, John Hay, Lyman Abbott, 
Henry M. Stanley, John Watson, Robert Ball, and 
others whose names I have forgotten in the years 
since the fund was raised. Mark Twain became 
chairman of the committee, and his advice about 
getting in money was excellent. "Don't try to 
raise a big fund from which you will get only inter- 
est," he said; "have men agree to give so much a 
year for a series of years." It worked well, and 
moreover gave me a chance to find out who were 
the good sports in the literary world. Mark Twain 
could always be depended on. 

Crawford's first book, "Mr. Isaacs," appeared 
in 1882, and in his twenty-seven writing years he 
published forty-five novels. Whenever a new one 
came out (and how we miss them now!) I bought 

[ 249 ] 



A GOLDEN AGE OF AUTHORS 

and enjoyed it in the same way that I would enjoy 
a good play, and that was just what Crawford 
meant that his reader should do. In his book, "The 
Novel: What It Is," he answers the question, "It 
is or ought to be a pocket-stage — scenery, light, 
shade, the actors themselves, all made of words 
cleverly put together." The "purpose novel" was 
to him "an odious attempt to lecture people who 
hate lectures." 

An entire chapter could be written about that 
most modern of moderns, Oliver Herford, except- 
ing that one might infringe some of Herford's copy- 
rights by doing so. He is the man who is credited 
with having referred to the Waldorf-Astoria as 
"the hotel which caters to the exclusiveness of the 
masses," and who altered a very old saw into, 
"Many are called but few get up." Herford came 
in one day and wanted to know if I would give him 
an advertisement for a little paper which he and 
Gelett Burgess were starting. I told him that I 
thought not. He wanted to know why. 
"Oh, because it will be too ephemeral." 
"Why should it be ephemeral.^" 
"You will get sick of it and it will stop." 
"Nonsense," said Herford; "I got sick of The 
Century long ago, and it did n't stop." 
I remember when Mr. Roosevelt came into the 
[ 250 ] 



m y^ h ^ 





Q 5 



a 

H 

o 

Q 

o 

P5 

o 

o 

S 

s 



THEODORE ROOSEVELT . 

office on his way from the convention at Phila- 
delphia, sat down on a box, and told us all about 
his nomination for the Vice-Presidency. And I wish 
I could remember just what he said, but I have a 
decided impression that he told us that he meant 
to make that oflBce more important than it ever 
had been made before. 

I was crossing Union Square one hot August 
day with Will Carey, years before, when we met 
Roosevelt hm^rying through the Square. It was in 
the days when he was police commissioner, and I 
had been reading in the morning paper of some of 
his wanderings at night, looking after his force. 

''Aren't you going to take any vacation, Mr. 
Roosevelt?" I asked, bromidically. 

"Where do you suppose I could have as good a 
time as I am having right here in New York? " was 
the reply, with snapping teeth. With him the bigger 
the job the better the time. He had none of the 
old-fashioned New England theology in his make- 
up, with its rewards for duty. The doing a worth- 
while job well was its own reward. 

Major Pond, greatest of lecture managers, had a 
way of bringing what he called his "talent" into 
our oflGice, and leaving them there to be enter- 
tained — Anthony Hope, Ian Maclaren, Zangwill, 
Hall Caine, the English Winston Churchill, and 

[251 ] 



A GOLDEN AGE OF AUTHORS 

many more — very easy men to entertain. I am 
sure they must have given a great deal more than 
they received. We helped the major to get lecturers 
and he sometimes helped us to get authors. Church- 
ill came to America to tell the story of his escape in 
the Boer War, and the major made a contract with 
him to pay so much for each lecture and to pay all 
of his expenses. ''And do you know what that 
young man did.^^" said the major; "he drank a pint 
of champagne for breakfast every morning, and I 
had to pay for it." 

Telling this story once in Indianapolis, a gentle- 
man present remarked that perhaps this propen- 
sity to drink champagne in the morning was 
merely because Churchill wished to run up an ex- 
pense account of more than ordinary proportions. 
He said that Churchill lectured in Indianapolis in 
a very large hall to a very small audience, and his 
ire over the management of his lectures, which 
evidently were not being well advertised, was very 
apparent. His anger was, of course, directed chiefly 
at Major Pond, and it is not impossible that after- 
wards, to get even, he drank the major's health at 
the major's expense as he partook of his morning 
meal. 

Major Pond was a man who was very much 
beloved by many people who lectured under his 

[ 252 ] 



MAJOR POND 

management, and disliked by others. Henry Ward 
Beeeher, who had traveled scores of thousands of 
miles with Major Pond, loved him. So did Marion 
Crawford. But when Israel Zangwill came over 
here he would not allow the major to travel with 
Him at all. Hopkinson Smith had a falling out with 
Major Pond and never would have anything to do 
with him afterwards. Smith told me that he had 
received a letter from a man in a small town of a 
few thousand inhabitants, saying that the writer 
had tried to get Hopkinson Smith for a lecture, but 
on writing to his manager he had been advised 
to let the manager lecture and at a considerably 
lower price. On confronting Major Pond with this 
letter, Hopkinson Smith said that the major de- 
clared it was not from the man with whom he him- 
seK was in correspondence. But how two men of 
the same name in a small town could be getting up 
lecture courses was always too much for Smith, 
and he never would allow Major Pond to place him 
again. I always believed that there was a mistake 
somewhere. 

It was unfortunate that the major got the lecture 
bee in his bonnet, because he was a splendid man- 
ager and a very indiflFerent lecturer. The headmas- 
ter of one of the greatest boys' schools in the coun- 
try told me that he had never had to apologize to 

[ 253 ] 



A GOLDEN AGE OF AUTHORS 

his boys for a lecture but once and that was Major 
Pond's. The lecturer talked about the people he 
had managed, with stereopticon portraits — per- 
son after person, a picture, a short biography, no 
continuity; many of the boys went to sleep. Even 
the major became sleepy, and looking up at a pic- 
ture said slowly, "Why, I don't believe I know 
who that is!" ''Seton-Thompson," called out a boy 
who was awake. *'0h, yes, Seton-Thompson " — 
and then he went on with his interminable biogra- 
phies. 

I have already referred to Mark Twain's feel- 
ings about having his manager a lecturer. If I may 
be permitted to speak for a moment of my own 
affairs, I always found Major Pond kindly, square, 
and generous. He took me up more than twenty 
years ago, the veriest amateur, and began to place 
me on the lecture platform, and he and his son 
after him have continued it all these years, nor has 
the shadow of a misunderstanding ever come be- 
tween us. My lecturing began with "An American 
in Egypt," a record of personal experience which I 
made for the Y.M.C.A. and some churches and 
schools in Yonkers. Will Carey heard it, told the 
major about it, and through him the engagements 
began to come in. I was busy in those days at The 
Century OflSce and could not go far from New York. 

[ 254 ] 



LECTURES 

My first historical lecture came about through a 
suggestion to Elbridge Brooks made by some one 
in the office that he should write a book for young 
people about the American Revolution — the rec- 
ord of the trip of a party of boys and girls to the 
battle-fields with a wise uncle who knew it all. 
Brooks said he would do it, but would I go with 
him to take pictures and be a companion? He 
would undertake the role of the wise uncle if I 
would be the girls and boys. So I studied up the 
battle-fields and we started in at Lexington and 
came out at Yorktown. He made a book, "The 
Century Book of the American Revolution." I 
thought I would utilize my photographs, besides 
printing them in the book, for a lecture; I knew of 
the Thomas Addis Emmet collection of old prints 
and manuscripts in the Lenox Library and of other 
collections whose owners my magazine work had 
brought me in touch with. I had enjoyed giving 
"An American in Egypt" and later a travel lecture 
with pictures, "From Gib to Joppa." So I pro- 
duced "From Lexington to Yorktown," illustrated 
with photographs of present scenes combined with 
contemporaneous prints and manuscripts. Major 
Pond took it up and in the first season placed it 
with more than sixty societies of the Daughters 
of the American Revolution and similar patriotic 

[ 255 ] 



A GOLDEN AGE OF AUTHORS 

bodies. A few years later I made "Arnold and An- 
dre," having the help of Dr. Emmet, who had 
gathered about all there was that shed light on the 
treason story. My friend, Charles T. Carruth of 
Cambridge, who was at that time an amateur 
photographer of great skill, went with me to the 
scenes of the treason and we took photographs. 
Later we went to Virginia together, where I un- 
dertook "Captain John Smith and Old Virginia" 
just before the season of the Jamestown celebra- 
tion. 

I have given "Arnold and Andre" four times, 
four years apart, at the West Point Military Acad- 
emy; General Mills, when superintendent, said 
that it should be seen there every four years as 
long as he had anything to say about it, so that the 
story of the universally despised American general 
and the brilliant young British officer, admired 
even by his enemies, who planned together to give 
up that very spot to the English forces, should be 
known to every American officer before his gradua- 
tion. 

The creation of historical lectures, uniting in the 
illustrations the old and the new, has always been 
a harmless hobby of mine. Each lecture is associ- 
ated with some kind-hearted collector who helped 
me; "Lincoln" with the late Major Lambert, who 

[ ^5Q ] 



LECTURES 

gathered so many rare objects and manuscripts 
associated with Lincoln; "Washington," with Paul 
Leicester Ford and with William F. Havemeyer, 
whose collection of Washingtoniana was unsur- 
passed. 

During the summer of 1918, just ended as I 
write, I have been devoting every other week to 
the Y.M.C.A. giving an illustrated lecture, "The 
Hun: A Study of Prussia," in the soldiers' camps 
and in forts and naval bases. It has been a great 
pleasure and a great privilege to help to interest 
these young men in European history and in the 
causes of the Great War. It has seemed sometimes 
as if the other historical lectures were only a prepa- 
ration for it. 



CHAPTER XVII 

George Kennan — Alexander Graham Bell 
Of the many lecturers managed by Major Pond, 
the record for number of consecutive nights is still 
held by George Kennan — two hundred nights, 
not including Sundays. The tour was undertaken 
just after the conclusion of Kennan's articles on 
"Siberia and the Exile System" which appeared in 
The Century from May, 1888, to April, 1890. In 
1865 Mr. Kennan had gone to northeastern Siberia 
as an explorer and engineer, engaged by the Rus- 
sian-American telegraph expedition, at the time 
when, owing to the failure of the first Atlantic ca- 
ble, it was thought that a short cable across Behr- 
ing Strait and a land line over Siberia would be a 
feasible means of communication between America 
and Europe. The success of the second Atlantic 
cable made the project unnecessary, but Mr. Ken- 
nan, on that trip and in a later one, acquired much 
information in regard to the exile system and 
reached the conclusion that the Russian Govern- 
ment was not as black as it was painted and that 
the revolutionaries were really a lot of anarchists 
who deserved their punishment. He learned the 

[ 258 ] 



GEORGE KENNAN 

Russian language and became familiar with its 
literature. 

It happened that our Drake once attended a 
lecture of Kennan's in Orange, New Jersey, on the 
subject of this trip; met the lecturer afterwards, 
became interested in his work and got him to call 
at the magazine office in New York. Gilder was 
greatly impressed with Kennan from the first, and 
when he found that Kennan had long desired to 
make a thorough study of the Russian exile sys- 
tem, Gilder advocated sending him on a trip to 
Siberia for the magazine. Kennan made a pre- 
liminary joiu-ney to St. Petersburg to consult his 
Russian friends as to the feasibility of it, and he 
received so much discouragement from their opin- 
ions that he did not even make a report to the 
office of the result of the investigation. But Gilder 
followed the matter up, continued to press Ken- 
nan, who finally agreed to make the hazardous 
journey, and with Kennan's known opinions then 
in favor of the Tsar's Government it was not diffi- 
cult to arrange with the Russian authorities for the 
trip. An artist, Mr. George A. Frost, went with 
him, and it is safe to say that no expose of any of 
the world's mistakes or cruelties ever excited so 
much attention as this series. Mr. Kennan soon 
found that his preconceived opinions based on 

[ 259 ] 



A GOLDEN AGE OF AUTHOES 

superficial evidence were all wrong; he found some 
of the gentlest souls in the world among the revolu- 
tionists, with evidences of cruelty almost beyond 
belief, and he wrote his story with a pen of iron. 
There were criticisms, but he answered them in 
such a way that no critic was ever heard from the 
second time. His love of accuracy, his habit of sav- 
ing every scrap of evidence, his way of keeping a 
good deal back when he made a statement that 
might be questioned — all these habits served to 
make his story accepted, and its publication ex- 
cited a feeling of genuine horror and sympathy 
throughout the civilized world. 

When the book appeared, following magazine 
publication, it was translated into every European 
language; in the city of Berlin alone four different 
German translations were issued by four publish- 
ers, and one of them lives in a hundred-thousand- 
dollar house, which he is said to have built from 
his profits on Kennan's book. No foreign copyright 
was obtainable in those days; if it had been the 
author would have made a fortune. 

The book was black-listed in Russia by the 
Government, but thousands of copies were surrep- 
titiously circulated. A magazine in Java serialized 
it. The whole world read the record of that trip of 
Kennan and Frost. 

[ 260 ] 



GEORGE KENNAN 

During a revival of forbidden literature which 
occurred in Russia in 1905-06 the censorship was 
temporarily abolished, and Kennan's book was 
printed in several different translations and ran 
serially in two Russian magazines. Again in 1913 
the book was exempted from the restrictions of the 
censorship. In 1901 Mr. Kennan went to St. Peters- 
burg — his first visit since he had been there in 
pursuit of material for The Centiiry. He thought 
the fact that he was on the black list would be for- 
gotten, and so perhaps it would have been, had not 
an over-eflScient journalist, correspondent of the 
Paris edition of the New York Herald, learned 
from the American consul-general that George 
Kennan was in Russia and sent the item to his 
paper. The news reached St. Petersburg and Mr. 
Kennan was waited upon by the police and es- 
corted to the frontier. 

^^liat impressed Gilder at the beginning of his 
acquaintance with Kennan was Kennan's way of 
acquiring and keeping in usable form all the facts 
on the subject about which he was preparing to 
write. In Kennan's house in Washington on his 
first visit Gilder saw in a drawer which Kennan 
pulled out a card index of over fifteen hundred en- 
tries referring to facts obtained from government 
reports, letters, magazine and newspaper articles 

[ 261 ] 



A GOLDEN AGE OF AUTHORS 

on the subject of Siberian exiles. The editor felt 
that a writer who would take such pains as that 
would have a basis of facts which could not be con- 
troverted. And these card indexes, later superseded 
by brown envelopes in which clippings could be 
placed, have been one of the secrets of Kennan's 
great success as a writer of facts and of his ability 
to overwhelm an opponent. For he kept both sides 
— he kept everything which bore upon the sub- 
ject. To-day his envelope-index of Russia is at 
least fifty feet long, the envelopes packed solidly in 
boxes; he has an index of Japanese material twenty 
feet long, another of Cuba, and one on every sub- 
ject he has written on or expects to write on. For a 
single article on suicide which Kennan wrote for 
McClure's Magazine he had a couple of thousand 
indexed envelopes full of material. The result of 
more than forty years of reading and reflection is 
in these envelopes, and in case he is attacked he 
can turn at once not only to everything that bears 
on his own side of a controversy, including the 
thoughts that have come to him on the subject, 
but probably to everything that bears upon his op- 
ponent's side as well. 

In 1893 the secretary of the Russian legation in 
Washington wrote and submitted to the magazine 
a reply to Kennan's strictures on the Russian Gov- 

[ 262 ] 



GEORGE KENNAN 

ernment (the book ''Siberia and the Exile System" 
had appeared in 1891), an article which had been 
approved by the Russian Minister of the Interior. 
Gilder sent it to Kennan telling him he would like 
to print it in the magazine if Kennan would write a 
reply. It was mid-winter, Kennan in the United 
States, and all of his material snow-bound at Cape 
Breton Island. But to get at it he made the jour- 
ney, and in an hour's time, warmed by a lantern in 
an ice-cold house, he had laid his hands on all the 
material he needed to prove his own case. He 
wrote his reply and the Russian side was never 
heard of again. 

Eight years later, when Kennan was in Russia 
in 1901, he called upon an old friend, a Russian 
philosopher, Lessevitch, whom he had not seen 
since his Siberian journey in 1886. Lessevitch came 
to the door himself, looked at Kennan as at one 
risen from the dead, and the first thing he said was, 
"Where did you get the material to overwhelm 
Botkin?" The envelope-index had done it, the out- 
growth of what he had first seen and been impressed 
by in the old Astor Library sometime in the sixties. 

The index has helped Kennan to be classed as a 
master of scientific and legal and many other kinds 
of lore. When his book on the Spanish War, 
"Campaigning in Cuba," appeared, Kennan sent 

[ 263 1 



A GOLDEN AGE OF AUTHORS 

a copy to his old friend, General James H. Wilson 
of Wilmington, Delaware, who had commanded a 
department in Cuba. The general wrote to the 
author, '*If you are not a military man you ought 
to be. I have recommended 'Campaigning in Cuba' 
to the War Department as a textbook for officers." 

The young man or the young woman who ex- 
pects to make writing a profession, and especially 
the kind of writing which is preceded by investiga- 
tion and is based on facts, cannot do better than to 
begin early to inaugurate such a system as has 
helped George Kennan to be an investigator whose 
position has been absolutely impregnable and who 
■can lay hands at a moment's notice not only on all 
his own facts, but on the other fellow's as well. 

My own intimacy with Kennan began about 
1895, when his report of what the climate of Bad- 
deck, Nova Scotia, where he had a summer home, 
could do for hay-fever patients, and his own and 
Mrs. Kennan's cordial invitation, took me to Bad- 
deck, where I have been a number of times since, 
never having a symptom of hay-fever while living 
in that glorious climate, sailing in its waters, fish- 
ing in its streams, camping in its deep, almost 
primeval, forests. Kennan and I wheeled over most 
of its roads in the days when the bicycle was an 
approved means of locomotion; not always very 

[ 264 ] 



^.■^- 




GEORGE KENNAN 

good roads they were, but to the bicycler a single 
track is "as if the world were covered with leather" 
— as the Spanish proverb runs. 

I have in these "files" of mine two lots of letters 
from Kennan, the first to Roswell Smith in 1888, 
when the writer was working on the Siberia series, 
the second, of a lighter character, to me in 1895- 
1904. The former are interesting both because they 
show Kennan's habit of mind during the prepara- 
tion of the papers, and for their pen-pictures of 
Russia at a time when it was believed that a revo- 
lution would bring peace and happiness to that 
Tsar-burdened land. And so perhaps it would if 
the revolution had not run away from its real lead- 
ers, the men who had the best interests of Russia 
and its people at heart. No one feels the agony of 
the present situation more than George Kennan 
and the men and women with whom he has worked 
side by side for more than a generation. 

From the letters to Mr. Smith I make these se- 
lections : 

Washington, D.C., January 24, 1888 
My dear Mr. Roswell Smith: 

Your generous words of appreciation have given me 
great pleasure and encouragement. I was very anxious 
that the tone and temper of my articles should not dis- 
appoint you nor be out of harmony with the influence 
which The Century Magazine has always exerted in the 

[ 265 ] 



A GOLDEN AGE OF AUTHORS 

direction of right thinking and right living. I am more 
desirous that my articles should do good than they 
should succeed in the narrow commercial sense of the 
word. For this reason I have tried to avoid exaggera- 
tion and to write with calmness and self-restraint. If I 
have satisfied you I know that I cannot have gone far 
astray. 

Washington, March 24, 1888 

I avail myself of the first moment of time since your 

letters of March 21st and 22nd were received to tell you 

how deeply I feel and appreciate your thoughtfulness, 

consideration and generosity. I left the service of the 

, probably forever, night before last; and how great 

a load has been lifted from my shoulders even you can 
hardly understand. The mere consciousness that I am 
no longer bound to that wheel and that I can devote 
myself exclusively to work which is not only far more 
congenial [Mr. Kennan was then writing his Siberia 
articles] but infinitely more important, has braced me 
up like a tonic, and I feel stronger and more buoyant to- 
day than I have for many weeks. . . . During the past 
three months my mind has been so jaded and my physi- 
cal energies so depressed that I have not been able to 
work at my best and sometimes have hardly been able 
to work at all. . . . The $2000 which you so generously 
propose to add to the compensation for the magazine 
articles will relieve me from financial worry until my 
work for The Century Company in connection with the 
Siberian expedition is entirely finished, and by that 
time, unless I mistake all indications, the demand for 
lectures will make it unnecessary for me to go back 
to . 



GEORGE KENNAN 

Like General Grant, Kennan was paid for his 
Century contributions more than the price agreed 
on. He was originally to have six thousand dollars 
for twelve articles on life in Siberian prisons, and 
to pay his own traveling expenses while gathering 
his material. This was a fair price in the eighties, 
but it would not be considered so in these days. 

The great success of Kennan's articles, and ad- 
miration for the writer and his work, prompted 
Roswell Smith twice to send him a check for two 
thousand dollars in addition to the stipulated pay- 
ment. Kennan wrote in all some twenty-five arti- 
cles, and he was paid for the extra ones, so that he 
received from the company nearly fifteen thousand 
dollars. Moreover, the great public interest in the 
articles in the magazine helped him to earn twenty 
thousand dollars more through a contract with 
Major Pond, by which he was to receive one hun- 
dred dollars a night for two hundred nights and all 
of his traveling expenses. 

To quote again from the letters to Roswell Smith: 

Washington, B.C., May 29, 1888 
I should not think of trying to send a lot of sheets into 
Russia in bulk. They never would get beyond the fron- 
tier. What I aim to do is to keep a steady stream going 
in registered letters until the Government interferes 
with it somewhere or in some way and then I will change 

[ 267 ] 



A GOLDEN AGE OF AUTHORS 

the course of the stream or the method of transmission. 
The Tsar of Russia is supposed to be all powerful in his 
own country but there are some things which even he 
cannot do and one is to prevent the importation and 
circulation of what his ministers are pleased to call "per- 
nicious" literature. It is utterly impracticable for the 
Russian police to search the whole foreign letter mail 
and until they can do that they cannot stop the importa- 
tion of printed sheets in letters. Suppose they do stop 
all letters addressed in my handwriting.'^ I will simply 
get somebody else to address and register my Russian 
letters. Suppose they stop all foreign letters addressed 
to exiles and "untrustworthy" persons? I will send my 
letters to editors, lawyers and university professors 
who are not under suspicion and who have promised to 
deliver such letters to the persons for whom they are in- 
tended. . . . None of my registered letters have thus far 
been intercepted. There is of course great interest in 
these articles among the Russian liberals and a great 
demand for them and if only it were possible to get the 
magazines past the censor unmutilated you would very 
soon have a large Russian subscription list. Since how- 
ever this is impracticable the articles will probably be 
hectographed or lithographed secretly in St. Petersburg 
or Moscow and circulated throughout the empire in 
that form. I received from Russia the other day a litho- 
graphed copy of an article by Count Tolstoi entitled 
"Church and State" — a savage attack upon the Gov- 
ernment and the Russian ecclesiastical system. I pre- 
sume this lithographed manuscript is circulating in 
hundreds — perhaps thousands — of copies through- 
out the empire. My articles will be circulated in the same 
way sooner or later. The only objection to having the 

[ 268 ] 



GEORGE KENNAN 

sheets sent from London is that it would make some- 
body a good deal of trouble and expense. They should 
be sent continuously every two or three days and not 
many at a time. If a lot of them are sent at one time or 
in one package they are much more likely to be stopped. 
All packages larger than ordinary letters are subjected 
to custom house examination and all newspapers, books 
and magazines go to the censor. 

The following refers to items in the newspapers 
stating that the Russian Government was consid- 
ering the abolishment of the exile system : 

Washington, D.C., June 5, 1888 
I had a long talk with Mr. Galkin Vrasskoi the chief 
of the Russian Prison and Exile Department about the 
projected reform of the exile system just before I left St. 
Petersburg the last time. He gave me an outline of the 
plan which was in contemplation then and there was not 
a suggestion in it of the abolition of the whole system. 
The Russian and Siberian papers have discussed the 
plan at intervals ever since, and have never for a mo- 
ment regarded it as anything more than a scheme for 
the limitation and better regulation of exile. The Sibe- 
rian Gazette a few months since, in a long and careful 
editorial upon the subject, condemned the proposed re- 
form as utterly inadequate upon the express ground 
that it did not propose to abolish communal exile and 
exile by administrative process. As for politicals, Mr. 
Galkin Vrasskoi told me that orders had been given for 
the erection of a new prison for political convicts at the 
mine of Akatui, and that they would in future be sent 
there. . . . 

[ 269 ] 



A GOLDEN AGE OF AUTHORS 

There is nothing whatever in the code of laws en- 
titled "Rules concerning Police Surveillance'* to lead 
an uninstructed reader to suppose that a citizen of St. 
Petersburg may be put under police surveillance in the 
Trans Baikal or in the province of Yakutsk. It simply 
says that persons who are *' injurious to social order" 
may be put under police surveillance either at their 
places of residence, or at places of residence which may 
be assigned them. There is nothing in this apparently 
innocent paragraph about "exile" or about "Siberia" 
and yet by force of it a man who lives in Moscow or in 
Odessa may be "assigned a residence" in the wildest 
and least inhabited part of the province of Yakutsk. . . . 

Washington, D.C.y July 4, 1888 
... I received to-day from a friend in St. Petersburg 
a copy of the Novaya Vremya, the principal daily news- 
paper of that city containing a column and a quarter re- 
view of the Siberian articles in the May and June num- 
bers of The Century. This is the third long review which 
that same journal has devoted to my articles since they 
began in November and I am very much gratified to see 
that the Russian press finds in my work nothing what- 
ever to criticize unfavorably and a great deal to com- 
mend. Up to the present time not one of my statements 
has been questioned in any Russian newspaper which 
has been brought to my attention and all the Russian re- 
views that I have seen speak favorably of the fairness, 
thoroughness and importance of the series of papers as a 
whole. The Novaya Vremya in the review now before 
me says, "Mr. Kennan's articles in the May and June 
numbers of the widely-circulated New York magazine 
The Century, are deserving of the greatest attention, 
and are distinguished by the same meritorious qualities 

[ 270 ] 



GEORGE KENNAN 

to which we referred in a review of a previous article on 
* State Criminals.'" The reviewer then gives a very fair 
abstract of my description of the Tinmen Forwarding 
Prison with its over-crowding, lack of ventilation, etc., 
refers with approbation to many other features of the 
May and June articles, and says, "Thanks to the enter- 
prise and foresight of the editor of The Century, Mr. 
Kennan's papers are rendered doubl}^ attractive by a 
whole series of accurate pictorial representations of 
Russian life in general and the life of prisoners and 
exiles in particular." . . . 

This review is the more gratifying to me for the rea- 
sons that I don't know anybody connected with the 
Novaya Vremya and the paper is not regarded as an 
organ of the Russian liberal party at all. How it hap- 
pens that one Russian censor tears my articles out of 
the magazines as they cross the frontier and another 
censor allows the St. Petersburg press to notice them in 
this way I will not undertake to explain. I only know 
that a better plan could not be devised for giving them 
wide currency and authority throughout the empire. If 
it is n't what you would call providential, it is certainly 
an extraordinary piece of good luck. 

Mr. Kennan is a delightful companion, fond of 
story-telling (and no one tells a story better), a 
diligent student of everything that is going on in 
the world. It is a treat to be with him, as I have 
been so often in Baddeck, just to get his comment 
on the happenings of the day when the mail comes 
bringing the daily paper. It was nine o'clock in 
the evening that the morning Halifax Chronicle 

[ 271 ] 



A GOLDEN AGE OF AUTHORS 

reached the Kennan fireside, and it was often mid- 
night before the news was digested and Mrs. Ken- 
nan ready to bring out her httle supper, without 
which no performance of going to bed was com- 
plete. I remember the night when the paper bore 
in scare-head type the legend: 

DR. FREDERICK S. COOK OF BROOKLYN 
DISCOVERS THE NORTH POLE 

A moment of suspense, then "Who's Who" and 
looking up Dr. Cook (which is just what Maurice 
Francis Egan, our Minister to Denmark, did at his 
home in Copenhagen when the Crown Prince tele- 
phoned him the same news), then reading aloud 
the article, discussion, and a careful analysis, then 
from Kennan, slowly, "I — don't — believe — it." 
In a few days he was writing his views for 
The Outlook. Sledge-journeys in Kamchatka had 
taught him something about dogs and the food re- 
quired for their needs when traveling, and he could 
not figure out how Dr. Cook could cover the miles 
he said he had covered to reach the Pole, brought 
back the dogs he said he had brought back, and 
given them enough food to keep them alive and 
pulling sledges on the journey. As Kennan wrote 
me after my return to New York, '*0f course mira- 
cles, or near-miracles, do sometimes happen, and 

[ 272 J 



GEORGE KENNAN 

perhaps one happened on the ice of the Polar Sea 
in the spring of 1908, but there is n't a shred of evi- 
dence of it yet." 

The world discredited Dr. Cook after a while 
(with some distinguished exceptions), but it is a 
pleasure to be with a man who knows, right away, 
whether a world-astounding claim is true or false. 

My own letters from Kennan are of a nature 
very different from the letters to Roswell Smith. 
They are the result usually of our happy experi- 
ences in Baddeck. I have a photograph of "Cari- 
boo Camp" which he sent me — to get to that 
lovely spot you drive twenty-odd miles and walk 
seven over a "carry" and you reach the camp, set 
on the banks of a lake, the mountains rising all 
around. On the back of the photograph he has 
written: "Cariboo Camp. Twenty miles from a 
nightshirt! Come up again next fall and we'll put 
you in a ruflSed sleeping-bag with pink satin bows 
on the neck-flap. We're more luxurious than we 
used to be." On my first visit to "Cariboo Camp'* 
I had been doubtful about bringing a nightshirt, 
not being sure that one did not sleep in his boots. 
But I found a most comfortable cabin with as 
many modern conveniences as one needs in the 
wilds. 

October 14, 1895, he writes: 
[ 273 ] 



A GOLDEN AGE OF AUTHORS 

We have had glorious weather since you left us and 
the roads have been perfect for wheeling, but of course I 
had my machine put away in the barn and have been 
sitting up late nights a-straddle of a pen, with one eye 
fixed on the frosty Caucasus and the other looking out 
for Johnson's whip-lash and Carey's needle-pointed 
goad! No wonder that I'm getting stoop-shouldered and 
cross-eyed. But I am keeping my best eye on the Cau- 
casus and if it does n't elude my vigilance and escape 
into the desert of Gobi before I get it photographed I'll 
give you a picture of it that will raise your circulation a 
quarter of a Century! Seriously however I'm going to 
give you that series of articles this winter or perish in 
the attempt. . . . We had a fine time in camp. Why 
did n't you stay another fortnight and escape the hay- 
fever (I had gone back too soon) by going in with us.^ 
You would have come out of the woods with wings 
sprouting from your shoulder blades and nostrils that 
you could have blown a church-organ through! Next 
year make better plans — stay at least a month ... I 
can loaf for a while then without a guilty conscience 
— I couldn't this summer — and we'll take in Cape 
North, Ingonish, the whole Margaree from its source 
to its mouth, Boulardarie Island, Otter Harbor and a 
dozen other beautiful places that you have n't yet even 
heard of. 

Chicago, III, Nov. 24, 1895 

My dear Ellsworth: 

Just as a curiosity I have copied for you below a pleas- 
ant little letter that was handed to me when I went to 
the Y.M.C.A. hall here to lecture Thursday evening. It 
was written with a typewriter and although somewhat 
loose and incoherent in style is evidently the work of a 

[ 274 ] 



GEORGE KENNAN 

patriotic Russian who is in dead earnest. The italicized 
words are italicized in the Russian manner by separat- 
ing the letters widely instead of underscoring. No one 
but a Russian would adopt that method of rendering 
words emphatic — and his words hardly need it, as you 
will see! 

'* Chicago, Nov, <ilhl^m 

"George Kennan 

"Your vile despicable conduct in going around the 
country and telling lies to the good credulous people of 
this country about Russia, for the simple motive, that of 
making money, will not be tolerated any longer. 

" That a hireling of a geografical {sic) Society, as you 
have been, and by which capacity, only, you have been 
able to see, like a traveling ass, a portion of the vast 
Russian empire, with (doubtfully) a mere glance only on 
the nearest points in Siberia, west of the Ural moun- 
tains, and then, simply by the reading of stories on 
Russia, to dare, through base falsehood, to vilify, so 
daringly as you have done, the Russian Nation and its 
noble departed Ruler and His Government, such a mis- 
creant, vile, obscure creature as you are cannot be al- 
lowed to continue such criminal course any longer. 

"You hereby are warned that should you dare to con- 
tinue your base villainous conduct in this regard, a 
justly deserved punishment is irrevocably reserved for 
your worthless person'' 

How's that for a sweet amiable little billet doux? 
My chief characteristic would seem from this letter to 

be "daring," and I don't know why Mr. should 

expect that so "daring" a "miscreant" would abandon 
his "criminal course" at a mere typewritten threat of a 

[ 275 ] 



A GOLDEN AGE OF AUTHORS 

** reserved punishment." I did n't know but he would be 
waiting for me with a club when I came out of the hall 
and I was quite prepared for a brief interview with him, 
but like most threatening letter writers he failed appar- 
ently to screw his courage up to the point of action and 
probably contented himself with cursing the "vile mis- 
creant" in some neighboring beer cellar. 

I have had a good many impertinent and abusive let- 
ters, but I think this is the gem of my collection. 

From Baddeck in October, 1896: 

It's evident that if you want to escape that hay-fever 
altogether, you'll have to come up here next year and 
stay two months. Then, if it does n't rain, we '11 go to 
Boulardarie, Cheticamp and Arichat, and snake some 
more of those trout out pi Lake Ainslie ! 

In the autumn of 1898, after the Spanish War 
(where Kennan had represented The Outlook) I 
asked him to a Spanish War Night which the Al- 
dine Club was to have. His coming, he wrote in 
answer, must be uncertain, but he added a sugges- 
tion for the occasion: 

Shafter, with a ring of correspondents around him, 
hand-in-hand, singing ... 

"Oh, I got it in the neck. 
Sweet Marie: 
I am but a battered wreck 
As you see. 

[ 276 ] 



ALEXANDER GRAHAM BELL 

In the mud and rain I slept, 
While the very heavens wept. 
And the buzzards vigil kept 
Over me!'* 

would make a touching spectacle! 

As was suggested in a previous chapter, I have 
usually found men who have done worth-while 
things in the world to be the most companionable, 
when one knows them well, the most interesting 
and oftentimes the most fun loving in their hours 
of relaxation. George Kennan is all of these. 

It was through George Kennan that I came to 
know Alexander Graham Bell. At Baddeck, across 
the Little Bras d'Or Lake, looking toward the sun- 
set from the Kennans' home, lives in the summer 
months Professor Bell, honored by the world as the 
inventor of the telephone, beloved by his family 
and his friends for his own lovable self, and ad- 
mired by strangers for his patriarchal presence. 

Professor Bell is happy in his never-ending ex- 
periments. In the days before the Wrights made 
a success of their heavier-than-air flying machine 
Professor Bell was trying out weights and surfaces 
which could be upborne by the air, — thousands of 
experiments, thousands of records were made. He 
built great tetrahedral kites, capable of sustaining 

[ 277 ] 



A GOLDEN AGE OF AUTHORS 

weights, but never steerable, — that was to come. 
He experimented in many different directions; he 
bred sheep, taking infinite pains to improve the 
ewes and thus to produce more lambs and more 
wool. His experiments were finally made useless by 
the carelessness of shepherds in his absence. 

Meeting Professor Bell for the first time my 
thoughts went back to the day long before that I 
came near buying a hundred shares of the original 
Bell Telephone stock. I was a very young man in a 
Hartford insurance oflSce in the year 1876 or 1877, 
when an agent of the company in a near-by city 
came in with that amount of stock to sell at five 
dollars a share; did I want it? In the bank I had 
just about enough money to pay for it. But a 
young man should be careful about making invest- 
ments; besides, I had had ''inside" information 
from some friends in New Haven who told me that 
wires had been strung from attic to cellar and back 
again in the laboratory of the SheflSeld Scientific 
School, and the telephone tried out, with the result 
that it proved to be "merely a toy." 

So I spent my money on a diamond ring for a 
certain girl — events at just that time having in- 
dicated that a ring was much more of a necessity 
than any fancy stock certificate. 

I asked Professor Bell if he would be good enough 
[ 278 ] 



ALEXANDER GRAHAM BELL 

to figure out what that hundred shares of stock 
would have been worth at that time if I had pur- 
chased it. What was the value of my wife's ring 
computed in telephone stock? He figured. The an- 
swer was five hundred and seventy-five thousand 
dollars. It taught me a lesson — never to try to 
find out about the value of a thin^ before I bought 
it. 

One night, dining at Professor Bell's Washing- 
ton home, he asked me to take his place and tell a 
couple of stories at what he described as an evening 
party at a doctor's in the country near-by. He him- 
self must attend a meeting of the National Geo- 
graphic Society. I promised to do my best, and on 
the way out, in a big wagonette, with all the family 
and some other people, I began to think of stories. 
Only one would come to me, the story of the man 
who was walking alone outside the grounds of a 
lunatic asylum at night and hearing some one 
jump over the wall and run toward him, he ran, 
was chased till the hot breath of the lunatic was 
felt on his neck, then fell, to be pounced upon with 
the cry ''You're it!" I had told the story before, 
and illustrated with plenty of action it did very 
well. 

Meantime we had crossed the Potomac River 
and were being unloaded at the side door of a large 

[ 279 ] 



A GOLDEN AGE OF AUTHORS 

building. We passed through a long passageway, 
and came plump on a stage, with an audience of six 
hundred people looking up at us. I was given a seat 
and a printed program, and behold, I was to take 
Professor Bell's place both in Part I and Part II at 
an entertainment in the St. Elizabeth Asylum — 
for the insane! 

Never was a quicker change made for a substi- 
tute story. It came and several others with it, and 
no audience could have been more prompt to catch 
a point. I told them the ''polar-bear" story — it 
was new then, and the shout at the denouement 
was instantaneous. People who have lost some of 
their wits certainly retain their sense of humor. 

That "polar-bear" story was first told in New 
York by Mary Mapes Dodge's son, "Jamie" 
Dodge, at the Barnard Club. For the benefit of 
those who may not have heard it I set it down 
here: 

"Going out of my office one day I met in the 
doorway a French friend, his face full of eagerness. 

"'You tell me, — vat is a polar-bear .f^' 

"'A polar-bear.^ Why he's a big bear that lives 
up in the polar regions.' 

" ' And vat does he do, ze polar-bear.^' 

"'Not much of anything, — sits on the ice and 
eats fish, I guess.' 

[ 280 ] 



ALEXANDER GRAHAM BELL 

" 'He sit on ze ice and eat fish? ' 

"*Yes, whynot?' 

"'Vy not? Because I have just been asked to be 
polar-bear at a funeral, and if I have to sit on ze 
ice and eat fish, I vill not go ! ' " 

Professor Bell once told me an interesting ex- 
perience of his own in the early days of the tele- 
phone. At the time of the Centennial Exposition in 
1876 he was invited to go to Philadelphia and ex- 
hibit his new invention at a convention of scien- 
tists. He was not inclined to accept, but the lady 
who has so often helped him and who was then his 
fiancee, now Mrs. Bell, insisted upon his going, 
lent him the money, took him in a carriage to the 
station in Boston, with an assistant and all the 
necessary paraphernalia, and started him on his 
way. In Philadelphia a wire was put up reaching 
about a mile, and on the evening of the test the 
assistant was placed at the other end. The most 
distinguished scientist present was asked to speak 
into the large and strange-looking receiver which 
lay on a table in the center of the room. He was Sir 
William Thomson, afterwards Lord Kelvin. He 
hemmed and hawed for a few moments, while the 
audience waited for the words of wisdom which 
would come from Sir William's lips. Presently, 
"'Hey, diddle, diddle, the cat and the fiddle.' Fin- 

[ 281 ] 



A GOLDEN AGE OF AUTHORS 

ish that." And waiting a moment, *'*The cow 
jumped over the moon.' He said it." Great ap- 
plause. The telephone was a success; spoken 
words could be heard and questions answered at 
the distance of a mile. 

When Professor Bell met his assistant he said 
to him: "Could you hear Sir Wilham Thomson 
plainly.^" "I did not hear him at all." "Not hear 
him at all; what did you say.^" "I said, * Please re- 
peat; please repeat!'" 

And that was all that was said into Sir Wil- 
liam's ear. The question is, did he think he heard, 
"The cow jumped over the moon," or did he hear 
something which might be "The cow jumped over 
the moon" and, like the fine English gentleman he 
was, wishing to make a young inventor's experi- 
ment a success, did he say he heard it? 



CHAPTER XVllI 

The Suppressed Interview with the German Emperor 

The most interesting incident that ever happened 
to me in business was the suppression by The Cen- 
tury Magazine of the interview with the German 
Emperor which the magazine was about to pub- 
Hsh. Certainly the suppression was well accom- 
plished, for as I write these lines, ten years after it 
all happened, the interview is still unpublished, 
although a single copy is known to be in the hands 
of the President of the United States or the Secre- 
tary of State, delivered to the latter by the printers 
of the magazine in June, 1918. 

The story has been told often — I have told it 
myself briefly at least two hundred times in a lec- 
ture; others who knew the facts have written 
about it, but I am inclined to make a record of it 
here, and to give all the facts as I recall them. 

In the summer of 1908 Mr. William Bayard 
Hale, then on the staff of the New York Times, 
went to Europe with the intention of getting an 
interview with the Kaiser for The Times. The fact 
that he had written and printed not long before an 
entertaining account of President Roosevelt's daily 

[ 283 ] 



A GOLDEN AGE OF AUTHORS 

routine of hard work and hard play ("A Week in 
the White House with Theodore Roosevelt") was a 
certain introduction, a guarantee of what he could 
do with the Kaiser if he had a chance. And the 
Kaiser had a great admiration for Mr. Roosevelt. 

Application was made in proper form to the 
Foreign Office in Berlin, and Mr. Hale was told 
that he was free to see the Kaiser, that the Kaiser 
would do as he pleased about the interview, but if 
he gave it the manuscript must be submitted to 
the Foreign Office before publication. Mr. Hale 
then journeyed to Norway, boarded the yacht 
Hohenzollern which lay in the harbor of Bergen, 
and one evening the Emperor paced the moonlit 
deck for two hours, talking freely to Mr. Hale on 
many subjects, knowing that it was an interview. 
Mr. Hale wrote it out and submitted it to the For- 
eign Office. They made a few trifling excisions, 
asked to have a proof shown them when the article 
was in type, and refused to permit it to appear in a 
newspaper, saying that they considered newspaper 
publication undignified, but they had no objection 
to its appearance in what they called a *' review," 
that is, a magazine. 

Mr. Hale cabled to The Century offering the 
article for one thousand dollars. His offer was ac- 
cepted, copy mailed and the Kaiser interview was 

[ 284 ] 



SUPPRESSED KAISER INTERVIEW 

scheduled for publication in the December num- 
ber, then in preparation. It would add to other 
Christmas features, which included "Yule-Tide in 
the Old Town," by Jacob A. Riis, "A Christmas at 
Moimt Vernon" by Gaillard Hunt, a silver-fox 
story by Thompson Seton, and most appropriately 
the second article in a series on "Romantic Ger- 
many" by Robert Haven Schauffler, "The City of 
the Emperors," a richly illustrated paper on Berlin. 
At the end of the Berlin article, on a left-hand 
page, the last page of the form on coated paper 
which carried pictures, was placed a full-page 
portrait of the Emperor, made from a photograph 
taken the year before, showing him with medals 
and the up-standing mustache which is at the 
moment of writing the chief asset of cartoonists 
the world over. It was said in the article that the 
Emperor at the time Mr. Hale was writing no 
longer wore that mustache at an upward angle. 

The sixteen-page "plain form," as it was called, 
that is a form of uncoated paper, for text only, 
bearing on its first page "An Evening with the 
German Emperor," went to press in October, to 
appear, bound and on the news-stands, November 
20. Magazines must needs be prepared well in ad- 
vance in order not only to get the bound copies 
everywhere in America, but to ship the flat sheets 

[ 285 ] 



A GOLDEN AGE OF AUTHORS 

to England, to be bound there with EngUsh cover 
and advertisements and to be issued as long before 
the first of the month as possible. 

At that time it was customary to dispatch the 
English sheets about the seventh of the month. 
The December sheets should have been boxed and 
starting on their voyage by November 7. They had 
been printing for some days, when on the 28th of 
October a bomb was dropped on the diplomatic 
world by the appearance in the London Daily 
Telegraph of a report of a conversation with the 
German Emperor. It set all Germany by the ears 
and attracted great attention in England. It was 
not an interview; it was a collection of statements 
made by the Emperor at different times, prepared 
and published by one who was "a friend of both 
Germany and England," an ''unimpeachable au- 
thority," and the accuracy of what was written has 
never been questioned. It was published not only 
with the Imperial consent but because the Em- 
peror desired its publication. 

It suggested that the Kaiser was really a friend 
of England and quite out of sympathy with his 
own people. With great difficulty had he con- 
trolled them. The Germans had sympathized with 
the Boers, but not he; nay, he had refused to re- 
ceive President Kruger when several European 

[ 286 ] 



SUPPRESSED KAISER INTERVIEW 

countries had opened wide their doors to him. It 
was he, the Kaiser, who had prepared a plan of 
campaign against the Boers, a plan actually made 
use of by the British command. "You English," 
said the Kaiser, "are mad, mad — mad as March 
hares. What has come over you that you are so 
completely given over to suspicion.^ It is quite un- 
worthy of a great nation. What more can I do than 
I have done.^ I have declared with all the emphasis 
at my command that my heart is set on peace, and 
that it is one of my dearest wishes to live on the 
best of terms with England. Have I ever been false 
to my word.^ Falsehood and prevarication are alien 
to my nature. . . . How can I convince a nation 
against its will.^" He promised that Germany 
would always keep aloof from politics "that could 
bring her into complication with a sea-power like 
England," he called attention to the need of a 
German fleet on account of his country's rapidly 
expanding commerce, and the possibility of what 
might some day take place in the Pacific. "Look 
at the accomplished rise of Japan, and think of the 
possible national awakening of China, and then 
judge of the vast problems of the Pacific. Only 
those powers which have navies will be listened to 
with respect when the future of the Pacific comes 
to be solved." 

[ 287 ] 



A GOLDEN AGE OF AUTHORS 

It seems incredible that the manuscript of that 
Daily Telegraph article could have been passed by 
the Foreign OflSce. The Chancellor, Prince Von 
Billow, took the blame to himself; said that al- 
though he had had the chance to do so he had not 
read it. The Chancellor offered his resignation, but 
of course the Kaiser could hardly accept it. Much 
happened in the Reichstag, much was said in the 
German press that seriously strained the law 
against lese majeste, A notice appeared in the Of- 
ficial Gazette which was as near an apology as a 
German Emperor could offer. It closed with his 
endorsement of the Chancellor's statements (as to 
the Kaiser's practically having no business to give 
interviews on foreign affairs) and he assured Prince 
Von Blilow of his "continued confidence." 

This closed the incident officially, but an inmate 
of the Kaiser's palace during the months which 
followed has told the world of the cloud that rested 
upon the Emperor, of the change which took place 
in his manner, no longer blustering but chastened, 
of the walks in the garden, his hands behind him, 
two aides following, — thinking — thinking per- 
haps not only of the Telegraph indiscretion but of 
another instance of the same love of hearing himself 
talk. Would the second interview remain suppressed 
according to the arrangements which his clever 

[ 288 ] 



SUPPRESSED KAISER INTERVIEW 

government had made with some American mag- 
azine, or would it some time walk the earth and 
confront him? 

As soon as the English interview appeared the 
Foreign Office bestirred itself. They remembered 
that he had done it a second time. Where was it? 
Who was the man who had got it out of the Kaiser? 
When would it appear and where? Telegrams were 
sent to the German Consul-General in New York. 
The Consul-General telephoned, Mr. Hale called. 
"Would it be possible not to have the interview 
appear?" ''Hardly, because the edition is already 
nearly printed." "But all the expenses would be 
paid if it could be suppressed and something else 
take its place." 

It was very evident that The Century Magazine 
would be doing a great favor to the Emperor and 
to the German people if its interview should not 
appear. It was not as indiscreet as the Telegraph 
pronouncement but it was indiscreet enough, and 
coming just after that, its publication would have 
been an injury to the Emperor. We talked the 
matter over in the office and decided to try to 
suppress it — the accomplishment was not so easy. 
Could an interview, of which nearly a hundred 
thousand copies had been printed, be suppressed? 
The newspapers would know of it in a few days, 

[ 289 ] 



A GOLDEN AGE OF AUTHORS 

copies would become valuable, the printing oflBce 
was full of them — proofs, galley proofs, page 
proofs, sheets scattered about pressroom and bind- 
ery. It seemed impossible, but to destroy the 
interview appealed to us as better to do than to 
bring it out, sell a few extra copies, and then have 
everything forgotten except our own action in not 
trying to do what seemed at the time the proper 
thing. 

To suppress it if possible was decided upon at 
noon on the 6th of November. A clever young man 
went at once to the De Vinne Press, at the corner 
of Lafayette and Fourth Streets where the mag- 
azine was manufactured, and before any one but 
the manager of the press knew their value, the 
hundred thousand copies of the form containing 
the interview had been packed in large cases and 
taken to a safe-deposit vault — every proof had 
been removed from the hooks in the composing 
and proof-reading rooms and destroyed, as well 
as original copy, spoiled sheets in the pressroom, 
every scrap of paper that bore a word of that inter- 
view. For days after reporters swarmed around the 
corner of Lafayette and Fourth Streets, as the 
printers came out from their work. Proof-readers 
were button-holed; one newspaper offered twelve 
thousand dollars for a sheet containing the inter- 

f 290 1 



SUPPRESSED KAISER INTERVIEW 

view, and another offered fifteen thousand dollars, 
but not a copy was ever produced. The reporters 
picked up something, but it was only a shadow of 
the original. We were paid the expense of paper, 
presswork, and what we had paid Hale — between 
two thousand and three thousand dollars in all, 
and we supposed the matter was closed — but not so. 

Months after, Mr. Gilder met on the street the 
man who had conducted the negotiations. He was 
Carl Buenz, then German Consul-General, later 
manager of the Hamburg-American line, and as I 
write this serving a term in an American prison, 
having been found guilty of giving false manifests 
to ships which were about to provision German 
cruisers at sea. "What have you done with the 
printed sheets?" Buenz asked. "We don't know 
what to do with them," said Gilder; "they are still 
in the safe-deposit vault"; and then, jokingly, he 
added, "you had better send over a warship and 
get them." 

A few more months passed, and one day there 
came a telephone message: "The warship is in the 
harbor. Can we get those sheets.^ " And sure enough, 
a big German cruiser was anchored in the Hudson 
River. The papers talked about her, — there was 
some nominal errand, I have forgotten just what, 
— but she came for those sheets, and one night 

[ 291 ] 



A GOLDEN AGE OF AUTHORS 

the cases containing them were taken aboard and 
the next day the cruiser sailed away. 

Two of the younger officers had become ac- 
quainted with the daughters of a man on our 
force while the ship was in New York. After a voy- 
age to the West Indies, lasting a few months, the 
cruiser came back to her Hudson River anchorage, 
and at a dinner a few evenings later with these 
friends one of the officers told the story of the 
boxes which had been brought aboard. When jBve 
hundred miles out of port they started to throw 
them overboard, but the first box floated ! It would 
never do to leave it tossing about in the ocean — 
so a boat was sent out, and the case was brought 
back to the ship. Then the commander deputed 
the younger officers, of whom this man was one, 
to spend an evening in the stoke-hold, tearing and 
burning up those sheets of The Century Magazine. 

It was understood at the time with the official 
in New York, that the article should become, as it 
were, non-existent, and it did, so far as we were 
concerned, but I wish it could have appeared dur- 
ing the war, though, as Mr. Hale remarked, in a 
recent interview, "it would not stop it." Looking 
backward, one regrets that it was not printed at 
the time it came to us, but in those days all Amer- 
icans, The Century conductors among them, had 

[ 292 ] 



SUPPRESSED KAISER INTERVIEW 

only kindly feelings for and a childish confidence 
in the Kaiser. He had warmly appreciated many 
of our citizens, Mr. Roosevelt, Mark Twain, the 
"exchange professors" from American universities 
who had held forth even in the Imperial presence. 
The only thought in The Century ofiice when we 
were asked to suppress the interview was "Will 
there be time?" If The Telegraph interview had 
come a week later. The Century article could 
hardly have been stopped. And I have often won- 
dered what would have happened if it had not been 
stopped, but had appeared in that Christmas num- 
ber. Would it have been only a nine-days' wonder, 
or, coming directly after the English indiscretion, 
would it have been really a serious matter for the 
Kaiser.^ His countrymen had been exasperated by 
the political indiscretion, would the personal in- 
discretions and the criticisms of the Roman Catho- 
lic Church which The Century interview contained 
have exasperated them to a point where they would 
have demanded the suppression not only of the Kai- 
ser's talks but of the Kaiser himself.'^ Probably not, 
— Germany would have stood a great deal before it 
disturbed a hair beneath that "divine crown," but 
the two interviews appearing together would have 
been a staggering blow to "Majesty" for a time. 

THE END 



INDEX 



Abbott, John S. C, 41, 47. 
Abbott, Lyman, 47. 
Advertising books, 167-169. 
Advertising in magazines, 121-126. 
Alden, Henry M., 26, 48, 183. 
Aldine Club, Jefferson dinner, 83; 

dinners, 243-249. 
Aldrich, Thomas Bailey, 17, 46, 92, 

196, 246. 
Alexander, John W., 69. 
Alger, Horatio, Jr., 92. 
Allen, Elizabeth Akers, 45. 
Allen, James Lane, 244. 
"American Commonwealth, The," 

14. 
American literature in 1870, 38. 
Andersen, Hans Christian, 45. 
Anderson, A. A., 156. 
"Artemus Ward," 211, 214, 222. 
Atkinson, Edward, 46, 159. 
Atlantic Monthly. The, 26, 46, 56, 232. 
Authors and one publisher, 175. 
Authors' names printed, 48. 

Bailey, James M., 217. 

Bangs, John Kendrick, 196, 218, 246. 

Barlow, Francis C, 133. 

Barnard, Charles, 43. 

Barnard statue of Lincoln, 137. 

"Barnum, P. T., The Life of," 215- 

217. 
Barrett, Lawrence, 18. 
Barrie, James M., 246. 
Barrow, "Aunt Fanny," 20. 
Bartlett, Captain Robert A., 209. 
"Battles and Leaders of the Civil 

War," 233-235. 
Beauregard, General P. G. T., 233. 
Beaux, Cecilia, 150. 
Beckwith, Carroll, 149, 156. 
Beecher, Henry Ward, 130. 
Beers, Henry A., 56, 196. 



Bell, Alexander Graham, 277-282. 

"BenHur;' 184. 

Benjamin, Park, 211. 

Benjamin, S. G. W., 45. 

Besant, Sir Walter, 106. 

"Best Sellers," 169. 

Bigelow, John, 45. 

Billings, Pay Inspector L. G., 246. 

Birch, Reginald, 69. 

"Birds' Christmas Carol, The," 97. 

Bispham, William, 19. 

Bissell, Colonel George P., 4. 

Blackmore, R. D., 183. 

Blashfield, Edwin H., 69, 149. 

Bok, Edward, 130, 230. 

Bolles, Alfred P., 133. 

Bonner, Robert, 123. 

Bookman, The, 170, 173. 

"Book of the Dead, The," 103. 

Booth, Edwin, 17-19. 

Booth, Mary L., 17. 

Borchgrevink, 246. 

Boston Art Club, 75, 76. 

Boteler, Alexander R., 232. 

Botta, Mrs. Vincenzo, 20. 

"Bowles, Samuel, Life of," 235. 

Brainerd, Cephas, 134-136. 

"Bread-winners, The," 63. 

Brennan, Alfred, 69. 

Bridges, Robert, 24, 245. 

Brooks, Eldridge S., 255. 

Brooks, Noah, 55, 58, 59. 

Browne, Junius Henri, 47. 

Browning, Robert, 116. 

Bryant, William CuUen, 135. 

Bryce, James, 14. 

Buck, Dudley, 111. 

Buel, Clarence Clough, plans the 

"Gudgeon Club," 66; works with 

Gilder, 142; at Gilder dinner, 153; 

suggests and helps to edit "War 

Series," 232-234. 



[ 295 ] 



INDEX 



Buenz, Carl, 291. 

Biinner, Henry Cuyler, tells William 
W. Ellsworth of Robert Louis 
Stevenson, 27; his "Home, Sweet 
Home," 29; his "Way to Arcady," 
42, 144; at Gilder dinner, 153. 

Burbank, Luther, 113. 

Burgess, Gelett, 250. 

Bm-lington Hawk-Eye, The, 218. 

Burnett, Frances Hodgson, 50. 

Burroughs, John, 92, 112. 

Burt, James, 133. 

Burt, Silas W., 133. 

Bushnell, Horace, 45. 

Cable, George W., met by William 
Carey in New York, 32; his "dis- 
covery," 51; as observer, 112; 
writes of Gilder, 140; his reading 
with Mark Twain, 234; contribu- 
tor to fund, 249. 

"Campaigning in Cuba," by George 
Kennan, 263. 

Carey, William, 31-35; Noah Brooks 
finds him a place, 59; at Gilder din- 
ner, 153; Mark Twain writes to, 
230; meeting Roosevelt, 251; hears 
W^illiam W. Ellsworth lecture, 254; 
his "needle-pointed goad," 274. 

Carleton, George W., 221. 

Carruth, Charles T., 256. 

Carruth, Mrs. Charles T., facing 264. 

Cary, Alice, 45, 46. 

"Celebrated Jumping Frog, The," 
221. 

Centennial Exposition, 111, 281. 

Century, The (Scribner's Monthly), 
founding, 2; naming, 9; American 
literature at its beginning, 38; a 
force in literature, 41; early con- 
tributors, 45 ; prints authors' 
names, 48; dialect in, 60; develop- 
ment of illustrations, 70; first to 
take advertising, 121; its covers, 
158; its offices, 163; type in, 200; 
Theodore L. De Vinne prints, 201; 
success during making of Century 
Dictionary, 205; its War Series, 
232-234; Lincoln "Life," 239-242; 
Kennan's "Siberia," 258-261; sup- 



presses the Kaiser Interview, 283- 
293. 

Century Atlas, 204. 

Century Club, 136, 162. 

Century Company, The, founded as 
"Scribner & Co.," 9; its annual 
meetings, 10; change of name, 23; 
its office at 743 Broadway, 24, 36; 
the decorations in its Union Square 
offices, 162; its books, 169; letter to 
it from a Colorado complainant, 
177; an application for position, 
179; "The Fugitive Blacksmith" 
comes to it, 195; Theodore L. 
De Vinne prints its publications, 
201; expectation that it would be 
named for Roswell Smith, 202; 
De Vinne Press "Printers to The 
Century Co.," 202; the loss of 
Grant's "Memoirs," 230-242. 

Century Cyclopedia of Names, 204, 
207, 210. 

Century Dictionary, The, 203-210. 

Century Magazine, The, its founders, 
2; proposal to begin it, 8; name, 9; 
Roswell Smith's chief money- 
maker, 9; postage rules when it 
began, 11; early offices, 24; clerks 
in charge of its subscription lists, 
25; poetry, 26; loses (and regains) 
Stevenson, 27; its "Literature" de- 
partment, 28; prints "Silverado 
Squatters," 28; "Bric-a-Brac," 29; 
prints "Rudder Grange," 29; prints 
"The Lady or the Tiger.?" 31; 
William Carey in charge of its going 
to press, 31; Dr. Holland thinks of 
issuing a Helen Hunt Jackson num- 
ber, 36; American literature when 
it began and its early numbers, 38- 
53; prints "Gabriel Conroy," 57; 
Noah Brooks's contributions, 59; 
dialect in, 60; letter to editors from 
Irwin Russell, 61; prints "The 
Breadwinners," 63; its art mana- 
gers, 70; its illustrations, 70; wood- 
engraving in it, 70; secm-es Jef- 
ferson's "Autobiography," 79-82; 
Hopkinson Smith WTites "Colonel 
Carter of Cartersville " for it, 86; 



[ 296 ] 



INDEX 



prints articles on *' Children's Mag- 
azines," 88; prints "The Sea- Wolf," 
99; John Burroughs first writes for 
it, 113; John Muir first writes for 
it, 113; first to take advertising, 
121-126; McClure's plan for it, 127; 
Gilder its editor, 140-154; its covers, 
158; its Union Square offices, 162- 
164; prints "Hugh Wynne" as a 
serial, 187; De Vinne prints it, 200; 
its success when the Century Dic- 
tionary was in the making, 205; 
"Uncle Esek's Wisdom" printed in 
it, 213; the War Series, 232-234; 
Nicolay and Hay's "Lincoln" 239- 
242; Kennan's "Siberia," 258-271; 
suppresses Kaiser Interview, 283- 
293. 

Champney, J, Wells, 50. 

Chapin, Joseph H., 23. 

Charcot, Dr. Jean Martin, 192. 

Chesterton, Gilbert K., 120. 

Chichester, Charles F., 67, 153, 203. 

ChUds, George W., 236. 

Choate, Joseph H,, 135, 136, 160. 

Church, R S., 69. 

Churchill, Winston, 193, 244. 

Churchill, Winston (Spencer), 251, 
252. 

Clarke, William Fayal, 29, 94, 153. 

Clemens, Samuel L., see Twain, 
Mark. 

Clemens, Mrs. Samuel L., 224, 227, 
228, 244. 

Cleveland, Grover, 151. 

Cleveland, Mrs. Grover, 151. 

Coan, Titus M., 45. 

Cobb, Irvin S., 220. 

Cole, Timothy, 69, 71-74. 

Coleman, Caryl, 78. 

Collins, Wilkie, 39, 40. 

" Colonel Carter of Cartersville," 86. 

Conant, S. S., 47. 

"Confessions of a Wife, The," 64. 

Conway, Moncure D., 47. 

Cook, Frederick S., 208, 272. 

Cooke, Rose Terry, 92, 183. 

Coolidge, Susan, 45, 96. 

Cornhill, The, 71. 

Cost of making a book, 165-167. 



Cox, Kenyon, 69, 149. 

Craik, Dinah Mulock, 47. 

Crawford, Marion, 244, 250. 

Critic, The, 141. 

Curie, Madame Marie S., 142. 

Curtis, Cyrus H. K., 131. 

Curtis, George William, 132-134. 

"Daddy Long-Legs," 180, 182. 

Daly, Augustin, 223. 

Dana, Charles Anderson, 54. 

Dana, Richard Henry, Jr., 46, 104. 

Danbury, Conn., 218. 

"David Harum," 185. 

Davis, Rebecca Harding, 42, 45. 

Davis, Richard Harding, 18, 144, 
183. 

"Dear Enemy," 182. 

De Forest, J. W., 46. 

Deland, Margaret, 115. 

Delineator, The, 131. 

De Mille, James, 47, 211. 

Detroit Free Press, The, 218. 

De Vinne, Theo. L., 153, 199-203. 

De Vinne Press, 127, 199-203. 

Dickens, Charles, 39, 40, 55. 

Dirigibles, E. C. Stedman's sugges- 
tion regarding, 142. 

Dobson, Austin, 34. 

Dodge, James, 280. 

Dodge, Mary Abigail, 212. 

Dodge, Mary Mapes, at Miss Booth's 
receptions, 17; with Frank R. 
Stockton, 29; contributor to 
Scribner's Monthly, 45; her article 
"Children's Magazines," 88; begin- 
ning St. Nicholas, 89-97; with 
other office workers, 164; fears 
Mark Twain as contributor, 224. 

"Dodge Club, The," 211. 

Doty, Douglas Z., 180. 

Doubleday, General Abner, 132. 

Doyle, Conan, represented by A. P. 
Watt, 106; helps S. S. McClure, 
129; Aldine Club dinner in honor 
of, 246; an original Sherlock 
Holmes story by, 247. 

Drake, Alexander W., in charge of 
art department of Scribner's 
Monthly, 9; 68-70; starts with 



[ 297 



INDEX 



group of young artists, 149; at 
Gilder dinner, 153; helps to deco- 
rate office, 163; supervises print- 
ing, 201; helps to perfect Diction- 
ary page, 203; decorates room for 
Mark Twain dinner, 243; meets 
George Kennan, 259. 

Dryden, John, 109. 

Du Maurier, George, 74. 

DuMond, F. v., 69. 

Duse, Eleonora, 150. 

Eaton, Wyatt, 72. 

"Eddie," Prince, 118. 

"Editor's Easy Chair," 131. 

"Education of Henry Adams, The," 
159. 

Egan, Maurice Francis, 272. 

Eggleston, Allegra, 162. 

Eggleston, Edward, 45, 62. 

Eggleston, George Gary, 196. 

Eitel, Edmund H., 34. 

Eliot, George, 39, 46. 

Ellsworth, Annie (Mrs. Roswell 
Smith), 7. 

Ellsworth, Bradford, 156, 161. 

Ellsworth, Henry L., 7. 

Ellsworth, William W., early recol- 
lections, 1-6; visits Dr. Holland, 
10; first morning in office, 12; the 
make-up of "Ranch Life," 13; 
breakfasts with James Bryce, 14; 
in New York in 1878, 15; makes 
New Year's calls, 16; at Miss 
Booth's receptions, 17; sees Edwin 
Booth, 17; joins The Players, 18; 
at Academy of Music when Booth 
and Salvini play together, 19; 
other New York receptions, 20; 
meets Ion Perdicaris, 20; his father- 
in-law knew Poe, 21 ; hears General 
Sherman tell of marching through 
Georgia, 22; sees Theodore Roose- 
velt on return from Africa, 24; in 
Hartford when fitst woman clerk 
entered an insurance office, 25; the 
young woman who wrote poetry, 
26; Bunner tells him of Stevenson, 
27; with Carey in Rome, 34; sees 
Helen Hunt Jackson, 36; Charles 



Barnard's suggestion as to photo- 
graphic outfit, 43; in Hartford when 
Warner wrote "My Summer in a 
Garden," 49; meets George W. 
Cable, 52; knew William Dean 
Ho wells, 52; sells a story by Bret 
Harte, 54; sees Thomas Nelson 
Page, 61; sees Edward Eggleston, 
62; does not know who wrote " Con- 
fessions of a Wife," 64; sees Walt 
Whitman, 64 ; Timothy Cole writes 
to, 72; helps George Inness exhibi- 
tion, 75-77; visits Europe with In- 
ness, Jr., 77-79; with Joseph Jeffer- 
son, 79-86; with Hopkinson Smith, 
86; sees Rudyard Kipling, 90; be- 
gins publicity work on St. Nicholas, 
96; with Jack London, 99-101; 
asks American manager of English 
house if members of firm still alive, 
103; attends James T. Fields' lec- 
tures, 107; hears John B. Gough, 
108; enters publishing business at 
an interesting period, 109; effect on, 
of Sidney Lanier's cantata. 111; in 
Washington with John Burroughs, 
112; sees Luther Burbank, 113; 
knew Thompson Seton as E. E. 
Thompson, 115; friend of Margaret 
Deland, 115; sees Henry James and 
Robert Browning in London, 116; 
spends Sunday with Waldstein, 
116; with H. G. Wells, 119; rides 
with Chesterton, 120; as an adver- 
tising solicitor, 124; his recollection 
of S. S. McClure's syndicate plan, 
127; comes from Washington with 
McClure, 129; goes to Gettysburg 
with George William Curtis party, 
132; Cephas Brainerd tells him of 
Lincoln, 134; his Lincoln lecture, 
136; impression of Barnard's statue 
of Lincoln, 137-139; friendship with 
Gilder, 140-154; friendship with 
Saint-Gaudens, 155-164; sends 
Miss Mary E. Wilkins a suggestion, 
187; first reader of "Hugh Wynne," 
187; entertained by Gordon L. 
Ford, 194; first sees Paul Leicester 
Ford, 194; sees Charles D. Stewart, 



[ 298 ] 



INDEX 



195-198; contributes a scarab to 
illustrate Century Dictionary, 206; 
wrote "Bible" letters to an older 
cousin, 212; as a boy reads "The 
Life of P. T. Barnum," 215; sees 
sign of "Burlington Hawk-Eye," 
218; letter to, from Bill Nye, 219; 
feeling about Irvin Cobb, 220; with 
Mark Twaini 221-230; sees Gen- 
eral Grant, 231 [also 3]; Mark 
Twain refers to Hamilton Mabie, 
243; his appeal to Mrs. Stanley, 
248; Oliver Herford wants an "ad," 
250; with Theodore Roosevelt, 250; 
impressions of Major Pond, 254; 
his lectures, 255-257; friendship for 
George Kennan, 271-277; with 
Alexander Graham Bell, 277-282. 

Ellsworth, Mrs. William W., "Ger- 
trude" in "Loan of a Lover," 223. 

Emerson, R. W., 47, 110. 

Emmet, Thomas- Addis, 255. 

Encyclopaedia Britannica, 123, 205, 
207. 

English publishers, 103. 

English, Thomas Dunne, 45, 47. 

Engraving, 70. 

Erben, Admiral, 246. 

Evans, Admiral Robley D., 246. 

Everett, Edward, 134. 

Eytinge, Margaret, 92. 

"Fanny Fern," 123. 

Fawcett, Edgar, 17. 

Field, David Dudley, 135. 

Fielding, Henrv, 105. 

Fields, James t., 46, 90, 107. 

Fields, Mrs. James T., 249. 

Fiske, John, 46. 

Fletcher, Horace, 72. 

Ford, Gordon L., 194. 

Ford, Paul Leicester, 193, 194, 257. 

Eraser, William Lewis, brought into 
ofBce to help Drake, 70; first uses 
wood-engravers to re-touch metal 
plates, 71; at Gilder dinner, 153; 
with other oflSce workers, 164; in 
charge of illustrating Century Dic- 
tionary, 206. 

Freeman, Mary E. Wilkins, 186. 



French, Frank, 71. 
Frost, George A., 259-260. 
"Fugitive Blacksmith, The," 195. 
Fuller, George, 76. 

"Gabriel Conroy," 57. 

"Gallegher," 144, 183. 

Garrison, William Lloyd, Life of, 235. 

German Emperor, Hopkinson Smith 
impersonates, 87; his interview sup- 
pressed, 283-293. 

Gettysburg, twenty-fifth anniver- 
sary, 132. 

Gibson, Charles Dana, 69. 

Gilder, Jeannette L., 141. 

Gilder, Joseph B., 141, 153, 180. 

Gilder, Mrs. R. W., 150, 154. 

Gilder, Richard Watson, Dr. Hol- 
land's assistant, 9; suggests Cen- 
tury name, 23; his room, at 743 
Broadway, 25; Stevenson's call, 
27; his "Old Cabinet," 42; Dr. 
Holland's interest in, 43; knowing 
who wrote "The Breadwinners," 
63; likes Jefferson's Autobiogra- 
phy, 81; at celebration of twenty- 
fifth anniversary at Gettysburg, 
132; at Century Club, 136; 140- 
154; with Saint-Gaudens, 155; sug- 
gestion for Saint-Gaudens's "Lin- 
coln," 158; his room, 162; in the 
office, 163; Mark Twain sends 
Thomas B. Reed to him, 228; 
Mark Twain hears him mention 
Grant's Memoirs, 234; Roswell 
Smith writes him about book pub- 
lication, 235, 236, 241; his impres- 
sions of George Kennan and en- 
gages his "Siberia" articles, 259- 
262. 

Gilder, Rosamond, 140. 

Gladden, Washington, 45. 

Gleason's Literary Companion, 75. 

Godey's Lady's Book, 75. 

Godkin, E. L., 133. 

Goss, Warren Lee, 233. 

Gosse, Edmund, 116. 

Gough, John B., 108. 

Grant, Colonel Frederick D., 236, 238. 

Grant, General Ulysses S., receptioE 



[ 299 



INDEX 



to in Hartford, 3; his "Memoirs" 
needing no editorial revision, 79; 
payment for War articles, 108, 
267; his "Memoirs," 230-239. 

Grant, Mrs. Julia D., 237. 

Grant, Robert, 196. 

"Great South, The," 51, 88. 

Grolier Club, 201. 

Gudgeon Club, 66. 

Guerin, Jules, 69. 

Hale, Lueretia P., 95. 

Hale, William Bayard, 283-289. 

Hambidge, Jay, 69. 

Hamilton, Gail, 45, 211-213. 

Harper, Fletcher, 122. 

Harper & Bros., 121, 184. 

Harper's Bazar, 17. 

Harper's Magazine, 38, 40, 47, 131. 

Harper's Weekly, 40, 134. 

Harper's Young People, 93. 

Harris, Joel Chandler, 112, 196. 

Harte, Bret, his "Luck of Roaring 
Camp and Other Sketches," 39; 
three short stories in The Atlantic, 
46; 54-58; as an observer, 112; his 
description of Mark Twain, 222. 

Hassard, J. R. G., 45. 

Havemeyer, William F., 257 

Hawthorne, Julian, 47. 

Hawthorne, Nathaniel, 1. 

Hay, John, his Raisuli dispatch, 20; 
his " Castilian Days," 46; his " Pike 
County Ballads," 59, 60; Thayer's 
hfe of, 60; his "The Breadwinners," 
63; letter about "The Fugitive 
Blacksmith," 196; the Lincoln 
"Life," 239-242. 

Hayes, I. L, 45. 

Headley, J. T., 45. 

"Heathen Chinee, The," 56. 

Herford, Oliver, 69, 167, 250. 

Hichens, Robert S., 106. 

Higginson, T. W., 46, 92. 

"History of American Literature 
Since 1870, A," 38, 57, 110. 

Hitchcock, Ripley, 185. 

Hole, Dean Samuel Reynolds, 227. 

Holland, Dr. J. G., founding Scrib- 
ner's Monthly, 2; to Europe with 



Roswell Smith, 8; W. W. Ells- 
worth visits, 10; receptions, 20; 
sells his stock, 23; death, 24; his 
"Jeremy Train," 41; his "Topics 
of the Time," 42, 43; contributor 
to Scribner's, 45; not approving 
"Truthful James," 57; not ap- 
proving "Jim Bludso," 59, 60; 
"Arthur Bonnicastle," 88; suc- 
ceeded by R. W. Gilder, 140; with 
Gilder on Fifth Avenue, 150; his 
room in Union Square, 162; sug- 
gests publishing a great reference 
work, 203; likes "Josh Billings," 
213; writes Gilder about Lincoln 
"Life," 240. 

Holmes, Oliver Wendell, 46, 190. 

Home Journal, 17. 

" Honorable Peter Stirling, The," 194. 

Hope, Anthony (Hawkins), 249. 

Houghton Mifflin Company, 97. 

Hours at Home, 9. 

" House of Harper, The," 41, 183. 

Howe Sewing Machine, 122. 

Howe, Walter, 133. 

Ho wells, William Dean, his "No 
Love Lost," 38; his "Their Wed- 
ding Journey," 46; his Century 
serials, 52; writes "Editor's Easy 
Chair," 132; speaker at Mark 
Twain dinner, 244; contributor 
to fund, 249. 

"Hugh Wynne," 168, 187-190. 

"Ik Marvel," 49, 95, 131. 

Illustrations, 74. 

India paper, 208. 

Inness, George, 75-77. 

Inness, George, Jr., in Boston, 75; in 

Europe, 77-79; at Gilder dinner, 

153. 
"Inside of the Cup, The," 193. 

"Jaek-in-the-Pulpit," 95. 

Jackson, Helen Hunt, 36, 37, 45, 46. 

James, Henry, Jr., 46, 116, 118. 

"Janice Meredith," 189, 193. 

Jefferson, Joseph, 79-86; at the Gil- 
der receptions, 150; and Grover 
Cleveland, 152. 



300 ] 



INDEX 



Jewell, Marshall, 3. 

Jewett, Sarah Orne, 92. 

"John PhcEnix," 211. 

"John Ward, Preacher," 115. 

Johnson, Robert Underwood, his 
room m Century office, 25; associ- 
ated with Gilder, 142; at Gilder 
dinner, 153; in charge of War Se- 
ries, 233; suggests General Grant's 
book, 234; reference in Kennan's 
letter, 274. 

Johnson, Samuel, 124, 231. 

Johnson, Thomas (engraver), 71. 

Johnston, General Joseph E., 234. 

"Josh Billings," 213-215. 

Juengling, Frederick, 71. 

Kaiser Interview, suppressed, 283- 

293. 
Keller, A. I., 69. 
Kelley, Lieutenant J. D. J., 246. 
Kemble, E. W., 69. 
Kennan, George, 208, 258-277. 
Kennan, Mrs. George, 264, 272. 
Kennedy, John S., 136. 
King, Clarence, 46. 
King, Edward, 45, 50, 51. 
Kingsley, Charles, 39. 
Kingslev, Elbridge, 71. 
Kipling! Rudyard, 90, 106, 150. 

Ladies' Home Journal, 123, 130, 131. 

"Lady of the Decoration, The," 
182. 

"Lady or the Tiger ? The," 31. 

La Farge, John, 157. 

Lambert, Major WiUiam H., 256. 

Lang, Andrew, 55. 

Langley's flying machine, 120. 

Lanier, Sidney, 111. 

Larcom, Lucy, 46. 

"Letters of Richard Watson Gilder, 
The," 140, 144. 

Lincoln, Abraham, in "The Gray- 
sons," 62; at Gettysburg, 134; at 
Cooper Institute, 134, 135; William 
W. Ellsworth's lecture on, 136; 
Barnard's statueof, 137-139; Saint- 
Gaudens's statue of, 137-139, 158; 
his stories, 213. 



"Lincoln, Abraham, a History," 

239-241. 
Literary agents, 106, 107. 
Little Corporal, The, 93. 
"Little, Frances," 182. 
"Loan of a Lover," 223. 
London, Jack, 97-102, 109. 
London Graphic, 70. 
London Saturday Review, 70*. 
Longfellow, Henry W., 46. 
Longfellow, Wadsworth, 246. 
Loomis, Charles Battell, 249. 
Lo rimer, George, 131. 
"Lorna Doone," 183. 
Lossing, Benson J., 7, 45, 47. 
Low, Will H., 69, 148, 149. 
Lowell, James Russell, 49, 114. 
Lowell, Percival, 142. 
"Luck of Roaring Camp, The," 54, 

55. 

Mabie, Hamilton W., 83, 243, 245. 
Macaulay's "History of England," 

41. 
McCarthy, Justin, 47. 
McClure, S. S., 127-130. 
McClure's Magazine, 128, 262. 
MacDonald, George, 41, 45. 
Mcllhenny, John A., Mr., 80. 
McKim, Mead & White, 162, 197. 
"Mark Twain " (see Twain, Mark). 
Matthews, Brander, 33, 244. 
Mead, William R., 162, 197. 
Meade, Rear-Admiral R. W, 246. 
"Mercy Philbrick's Choice," 36. 
Miles, General Nelson A., 246. 
Millar, Andrew, 105. 
Millet, Francis D., 149. 
Millet, Jean Frangois, 142. 
"Million-Pound Bank Note, The," 

229. 
Mills, General Albert L., 256. 
Mitchell, Donald G., 49, 95, 131. 
Mitchell, Dr. S. Weir, 187-193, 244. 
"Molly Make-Believe," 180. 
Monotypes, 85. 
Moore, George, 120. 
Morgan, J. Pierpont, 105. 
Morris, General George P., 17. 
Morse, Samuel F. B., 7. 



[ 301 ] 



INDEX 



Moulton, Louise Chandler, 46. 
*'Mrs. Wiggs of the Cabbage Patch," 

180. 
Muir, John, 113. 

Nadal, E. S., 153. 

"Nasby, Petroleum V.," 47, 211. 

"New Arabian Nights, The," 27, 

"New Gospel of Peace, The," 211. 

New Year's calls, 16. 

New York in 1878, 15. 

New York Ledger, 123. 

New York Mirror, 17. 

New York Times, 283. 

Newell, Peter, 74. 

Niblo's Garden, 84. 

Nicolay, John C, 239-241. 

Nicolay and Hay, 239-241. 

"No Name" series of novels, 36. 

Nott, Judge C. C, 135. 

Novels, prices of, 165-167; advertis- 
ing, 167-169. 

Nye, Edgar W. ("Bill") 140, 218, 
219. 

"O Captain! My Captain," 65. 
Ogilvie's Imperial Dictionary, 203. 
Ohe, Aus der, 150. 
Old-time humor, 211-220. 
Oliphant, Mrs. M. O. W., 41, 45. 
"Orpheus C. Kerr," 214. 
Our Young Folks, 93. 
Outlook, The, 272, 276. 
Overland Monthly, The, 54. 

Paderewski, Ignace Jan, 22, 150. 

Page, Thomas Nelson, 60. 

Paine, Albert Bigelow, first editor of 
"St. Nicholas League," 95; his 
"Boy's Life of Mark Twain," 224; 
discarding Mark Twain's autobio- 
graphic material, 225; his Biog- 
raphy of Mark Twam, 231. 

Paine, Henry Gallup, 153. 

Parker, Sir Gilbert, 106. 

Parrish, Maxfield, 69, 74, 94. 

Parsons, John E., 133. 

"Partners of Providence," 196. 

Pattee, Professor Fred Lewis, 38, 57, 
110. 



Pearson, Henry G., 133. 

Peary, Admiral Robert E., 208, 246. 

Perdicaris, Ion, 20. 

Perry, Bliss, 104. 

"Petroleum V. Nasby," 211. 

Phelps, Elizabeth Stuart, 130. 

Phillips, Morris, 17. 

Phillips, Wendell, 108. 

Philological Society's Dictionary, 
205. 

Piatt, Mrs. S. M. B., 45, 46. 

Pierce, Franklin, 1. 

Players, The, 18, 84, 237. 

Poe, Edgar Allan, 21, 55. 

"Polar-bear" story, 280. 

Pond, Major James B., William W. 
Ellsworth introduces him to Hop- 
kinson Smith, 86; with Mark 
Twain in England, 225-228; as 
lecturer and manager, 252-255; 
manager George Kennan, 258, 267. 

Poole, Ernest, 194. 

Pope, Colonel George, 127, 129. 

"Porte Crayon," 41. 

Porter, Gene Stratton, 170. 

Postal improvements, 11, 12. 

Potts, William, 133. 

Preston, May Wilson, 74. 

Prime, William C, 47. 

" Prince and the Pauper, The," 224. 

Publicity work, 12. 

Publishers, 113, 103-109. 

Publishers' troubles, 177-179. 

Pyle, Howard, 74. 

"Q. K. Philander Doesticks," 214. 
"Quaker Soldier, The," 189. 

Rainsford, Dr. William S., 246. 
Raleigh, Henry, 74. ^ 
"Ramona," 37. 
"Ranch Life and the Hunting Trail," 

13. 
"Raven, The," 21. 
Reade, Charles, 39, 40. 
Reed, Thomas B., 228. 
Reid, John, 142. 
Remington, Frederick, 246. 
Repplier, Agnes, 196, 211. 
Rice, Alice Hegan, 180, 181. 



[ 302 ] 



INDEX 



Richardson, Abby Sage, 45. 

Riley, James Whitcomb, 34. 

Ripley, George, 184. 

Roberts Brothers, 36. 

Rogers, W. A., 69. 

Roosevelt, Theodore, his "Ranch 
Life and the Hunting Trail," 13; 
returns from Africa, 24; his prompt- 
ness, 24; his African articles in 
Scribner's Magazine, 240; at Al- 
dine Club "Hunter's Night," 246; 
tells of nomination for vice-presi- 
dent, 250; William W. Ellsworth 

; meets, in Union Square, 251; Ger- 
man Emperor's appreciation of, 
293 

Roweil, George P., 122. 

"Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam," 78. 

"Rudder Grange," 29. 

Russell, Irwin, 61. 

"St. Benjamin," 211. 

Saint-Gaudens, Augustus, his Lin- 
coln statue, 137-139, 158; with 
young artists in New York, 149; 
at Gilder dmner, 153; 155-164; 
tells of General Sherman, 248. 

Saint-Gaudens, Homer, 156, 161. 

Saint-Gaudens, Mrs. Augustus, 157. 

"St. Nicholas League," 95. 

St. Nicholas Magazine, its quarters, 
25; its early editors, 29; 88-96; Mr. 
De Vinne's estimate for printing, 
199; "The Prince and the Pauper" 
as a serial, 224, "Boy's Life of 
Mark Twain " as a serial, 224. 

Salvini, Tommasso, 19. 

Sanborn, Frank B., 232. 

Sargent, John S., 150. 

Saturday Evenmg Post, The, 91, 123, 
131. 

Saturday Morning Club, of Hartford, 
223. 

Saturday Review, 70. 

Saxe, John G., 46, 47. 

"Saxe Holm," 36, 50. 

Schenck, Pay Inspector, 246. 

Scott, Frank HaU, 67, 153. 

Scribner, Charles, 23. 

Scribner, Charles, Senior, 2, 9. 



Scribner & Co., organized, 9; always 
a distinct house, 122. (See Century 
Company, The). 

Scribner's Magazine, 23, 240, 245. 

Scribner's Monthly (see The Cen- 
tury). 

Seelye, L. Clark, 45. 

Serials, their effect on book publica- 
tion, 82, 188. 

Seton, Ernest Thompson, 115, 254. 

Shaw, Henry W., 213, 214. 

Sherman, General W. T., 22, 248. 

Sherwood Studio Building, 156. 

Shurtleff, R. H., 156. 

"Siberia and the Exile System," 258- 
^277. 

Sigourney, L. H., 2. 

"Silverado Squatters, The," 28. 

Smart Set, The, 26. 

Smith, Benjamin E., 153, 164, 204. 

Smith, F. Hopkinson, at Drake din- 
ner, 69; Gilder starts as a novelist, 
86; impersonates the German Em- 
peror, 87; with the young artists in 
New York, 149; speaker at Mark 
Twain dinner, 244; falling out with 
Major Pond, 253. 

Smith, Katharine D. (Kate Douglas 
Wiggin), 96. 

Smith, Morris W., 21. 

Smith, Roswell, founder of Century, 
2; in Hartford, Conn., and Lafay- 
ette, Ind., 7; marries Annie Ells- 
worth, 8; to Europe with Dr. Hol- 
land, 8; Century his chief money- 
maker, 9; writing, 10; improve- 
ments in postal matters, 11; pub- 
lishes books, 23; employs w^omen, 
25; letter to from Bret Harte, 58; 
letter to from Noah Brooks, 59; 
letter to from Joseph Jefferson, 81; 
letter to from Frank R. Stockton, 
92; sends check to General Grant, 
109; builds up magazine advertis- 
ing, 121; helps McClure, 128; his 
new ideas, 129; advice to Jean- 
nette GOder, 141; asks Gilder for 
proofs of editorials, 148; at Gilder 
dinner, 153; meets Theodore L. 
De Vinne, 199; declines to give 



[ 303 ] 



INDEX 



name to De Vinne Press and to The 
Century Company, 202; tries to 
buy a dictionary, 203; makes Cen- 
tury Dictionary, 203-205; loses 

;• publication of General Grant's 
"Memoirs," 234-242; offer for 
Lincoln "Life," 239; letters from 
George Kennan to, 265-271. 

Smith, Mrs. Roswell, 8. 

Smith, Roswell Chamberlain, author 
of school-books, 2-6. 

Smith College, 82. 

Society of American Artists, found- 
ing, 149. 

Spofford, Harriet Prescott, 47. 

Sprague, Frank J., 142. 

"Spyk, Peter," Mark Twain in char- 
acter of, 223. 

"Stacy, Joel," 95. 

Stanley, Henry M., 248. 

Stedman, Edmund Clarence, at Miss 
Booth's receptions, 17; contributor 
to Scribner's Monthly, 45; con- 
tributor to The Atlantic, 46; writes 
to Howells, 56; his article on "Aer- 
ial Navigation," 142; at Gilder 
dinner, 153. 

Sterner, Albert, 69. 

Stevenson, Robert Louis, calls at 
Century office, 27; his "New Ara- 
bian Nights," 27; his verse about 
Frank Stockton, 29; his letter to 
his mother, 105; dies at forty-four, 
114. 

Stewart, Charles D., 195-198. 

Stockton, Frank R., at Miss Booth's 
receptions, 17; 29-31; his first 
Scribner story, 50; his letter about 
St. Nicholas contributors, 92; his 
"What Might Have Been Ex- 
pected," 95; a story he could have 
written, 204. 

Stoddard, Charles Warren, 58. 

Stoddard, Richard Henry, 17, 45, 
47. 

Stoddard, W. O., 45. 

"Story of Sevenoaks, The," 57. 

"Story of the Captains," 142. 

Strother, David Hunter, 41. 

Swift, Dean, 5. 



Tadema, Mrs. Alma, 116. 

Taylor, Bayard, 46, 47. 

Thackeray, William M., 39, 40. 

Thaxter, Ceha, 46, 95. 

Thomson, Sir William, 281. 

Thoreau, Henry David, 114. 

"Tom Sawyer Abroad," 224. 

Townsend, Edward W., 246. 

Trafton, Adeline, 45. 

Trollope, Anthony, 39. 

Tuckerman, H. T., 45. 

"Turmoil, The," 168. 

Twain, Mark, his part in "The 
Gilded Age," 50; in California, 58; 
writes of America in 1860 to 1808, 
110; as an observer, 112; William 
W. Ellsworth at his funeral, 154; 
"Partners of Providence" sent to 
him, 196; changes his manner of 
writing, 215; 221-242; Aldine din- 
ner in honor of, 243; subscriber to 
fund and advice, 249; appreciated 
by German Emperor, 293. 

"Two Years Before the Mast," 104. 

"Uncle William," 180. 

Van Dyke, Henry, 196. 
Vedder, Elihu, 78, 158. 
Vrasskoi, Galkin, 269. 

Waldstein, Prof. Charles, 116-119. 

Wallace, General Lew, 185. 

Waring, Col. George E., 46. 

Warner, Charles Dudley, 45, 49. 

Watson, Thomas E., 196. 

Watt, A. P., 106. 

Webster, Charles L., & Co., 235-239. 

Webster, Jean, 180, 182. 

Webster's Spelling Book, 6. 

Weed, Thurlow, 47. 

Wells College, 151. 

Wells, H. G., 119. 

Wells, Joseph M., 161. 

Wheelman, The, 127. 

White, F. Marshall, 98. 

White, Horace, 136. 

White, Stanford, 157, 158, 162. 

Whitman, Walt, 64. 

Whitney, J. H. E., 71. 



[ 304 ] 



INDEX 



Whitney, William Dwight, 204. 
Whittier, John G., 46. 
Wlddemer, Margaret, 96. 
Wiggin, Kate Douglas, 96. 
Wiggj», Samuel B., 90. 
Wiles, Irving R., 69. 
Wilkins, Mary E., 186. 
Wilkinson, W. C, 42. 
WOliams, Talcott, 18, 145. 
Willis, N. P., 17, 45. 
Willsie, Mrs. Honore, 131. 
Wilson, General James H., 264. 
Wilson, Woodrow, 213. 
Wister, Owen, 244. 



Wolf, Henry, 71. 
Women as clerks, 25. 
Wood, Katharine B., 19. 
Wright, Harold Bell, 170-175. 
Wyant, A. H., 156. 

Yonkers Statesman, 218. 

Young Men's Central Republican 

Union, 135.^ 
Young people's periodicals, 93. 
Youth's Companion, The, 93. 

Zangwill, Israel, 253. 
Zollicoffer, Judge, 189. 



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